{"id":282552,"date":"2026-02-09T19:02:51","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T19:02:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/282552\/"},"modified":"2026-02-09T19:02:51","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T19:02:51","slug":"vancouver-students-invent-device-that-could-prevent-floods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/282552\/","title":{"rendered":"Vancouver students invent device that could prevent floods"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two Vancouver high school students just snagged $5,000 in prize money for developing a device that could help prevent floods.<\/p>\n

Sameer Assanie and Bobby Yang, two Grade 12 students at Stratford Hall, entered and won the Youth Innovation Showcase for Airlume<\/a>, a device they\u2019ve created that detects when catch basins are clogged.<\/p>\n

When catch basins (also known as storm drains or drain gates) get clogged with leaves and other debris, it prevents rainwater from draining and can result in floods and garbage washing into nearby waterways.<\/p>\n

Currently, the City of Vancouver relies on volunteers to monitor and clean out catch basins through its \u201cadopt a catch basin<\/a>\u201d program. It has 40,000 \u201cadoptable\u201d catch basins, and needs 30,000 of those adopted.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

sgarbacik\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

Assanie and Yang realized that clogged storm drains were a problem in October 2024, when there was a heavy atmospheric river<\/a>. They had friends and family members whose basements were flooded.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt caused lots of damages. And that\u2019s really when we first noticed that this problem of drain grates being clogged,\u201d said Assanie.<\/p>\n

The students already had an interest in \u201cmaking stuff\u201d (they founded a tech club in their school) and wanted to create a solution.<\/p>\n

They started with the problem, and then \u201ca lot of hypotheticals,\u201d said Assanie.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t easy: it took a lot of time after school and on weekends, trial and error, and working with City officials to learn what they needed.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s definitely taken a lot out of us,\u201d added Assanie.<\/p>\n

The students learned that they couldn\u2019t attach Airlume to the outside of the drain grate, as someone could dismantle or vandalize it, and so they needed to figure out how to attach their device to the inside of one.<\/p>\n

They also had to find a way to make sure that water wouldn\u2019t get into the device, \u201cwhich kind of seems like it\u2019s obvious, but it\u2019s more difficult and more challenging to achieve,\u201d said Assanie.<\/p>\n

And they\u2019ve been working on bringing down costs and maintenance.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo that it\u2019s actually a viable solution for the local government,\u201d said Yang.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the manufacturing of the product. Without anything similar already existing, they had to figure out what kind of sensors and electronics to use and find a way to test them out.<\/p>\n

They bought a small drain grate off Amazon, attached Airlume to it, and tested it to see if the sensors would activate when the basin was clogged.<\/p>\n

How does Airlume work?
\n\"\"<\/p>\n

Sameer Assanie\/Submitted<\/p>\n

Airlume has a number of sensors that work in different ways to determine if a catch basin is clogged. The students hope that eventually they can install thousands of them across the city that could send live updates to municipalities.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn their interface, they would just see like a map of, let\u2019s say, red and green dots. And every red dot means a catch basin at risk, which they would be able to send out government workers or get volunteers to help unclog it,\u201d said Yang.<\/p>\n

The students said their next step will likely be working with the City of Delta to pilot their product on a catch basin in use.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then just collect data from that, see what needs to be improved, see what failed in our design, and just improve on that,\u201d said Assanie.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two Vancouver high school students just snagged $5,000 in prize money for developing a device that could help…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":282553,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[242,85,46,141],"class_list":["post-282552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282552\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}