Follow the Drop: Empowering Communities to Build Water Security & Resiliency

Follow the Drop is an innovative mobile application and data platform that is designed to enable cities to respond to climate change by collecting stormwater metrics and helping property owners to reduce flooding and pollution. Initial funding to develop the software came from the State of Hawaii Water Security Advisory Group and the Hawaii Community Foundation to support the reduction of stormwater runoff as well as build water security to meet Hawaii's Freshwater Initiative goals to increase water supply by 100 million gallons per day by 2030. In partnership with a local nonprofit, the initial prototype was beta-tested in Hawaii schools to ensure ease-of-use and was coupled with a 13-lesson plan design-thinking course for green infrastructure. Today the software and data platform is serving as a community engagement tool to support municipal green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) programs. Follow the Drop incorporates local rain sensor data and by taking a photo of an opportunity to capture stormwater from a drainage device (ex. downspout, catch basin, etc.), Follow the Drop automates the annual stormwater runoff volume, provides the optimum size green infrastructure system for that opportunity, and displays the volume of stormwater captured for the size and type GSI system inputted. The software also serves as a decision tool; the user is able to collect data from multiple opportunities and congregate and compare them in chart, map, or list view, to identify the best size and location for their green infrastructure project. Specifically for stormwater utilities (SWUs), the app can be distributed to its customers to identify opportunities to capture stormwater onsite to receive a potential fee credit, rebate and/or grant. The municipal agencies are able to track the locations, sizes, status and volumes of stormwater captured of submitted projects to support green infrastructure asset management, maintenance assurance, billing/fee credit management, compliance reporting, and sustainability metrics. The software is being piloted by the City and County of Honolulu to support its future SWU GSI incentive program to simplify the application process for property owners to submit GSI projects to receive fee credits. The presentation will provide the background including water resiliency goals set forth by the Hawaii Freshwater Initiative, current use cases and data output from the software for the Pilot, and next steps of the Follow the Drop program.