The Environmental Tech Lab (ETL) is excited to announce that after reviewing 108 applications from across the world, six innovative companies have been selected to collaborate with the NYC Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) on proof-of-concept projects.

The ETL is a public-private initiative launched last year by the Partnership Fund for New York City and DEP to identify cutting-edge technology solutions from the global tech sector to address the challenges of managing and maintaining New York City’s water and wastewater network, the nation’s largest.

During the proof-of-concept phase, the six selected companies will work closely with DEP to solve their biggest challenges across two key focus areas:

Data Management & Governance challenge:

How can DEP integrate and analyze disparate data sets to drive business strategies, deliver capital construction projects, optimize critical data models, and better protect people and infrastructure?

Gryps (New York City, NY) – an AI powered search & data platform for capital project owners.
Agency Bureau: Engineering Design & Construction

Resilience challenge:

How can DEP enhance climate resiliency goals including carbon reduction actions, noise/air/water compliance initiatives, flooding mitigations, and water conservation strategies?

DNOTA Air Quality Corp (Coral Gables, Florida) – manufactures a solar-powered air/noise pollution sensor that can monitor critical air and noise pollution factors including: pressure, temperature, relative humidity, noise, PM1, PM2.5, PM10, NO2, O3, NO, CO.
Agency Bureau: Environmental Compliance

GenH (Boston, MA) – a next-generation clean energy technology development company that has created a first in class, rapidly deployable, and modular hydropower system termed Adaptive Hydro™.
Agency Bureau: Water Supply

Intelligent Instruments (Southampton, United Kingdom) – manufactures intelligent sensors to monitor noise, vibration, and dust
Agency Bureau: Environmental Compliance

Prezerv (Boston, MA) – collects 3D electromagnetic data from the field and uses AI to convert the data into 3D underground maps
Agency Bureau: Engineering Design & Construction

Segura Water (Oxford, United Kingdom) – leverages the technology used in glucose strips to provide a portable water quality monitoring device
Agency Bureau: Water Supply

Last year, the eight companies in the inaugural ETL class collaborated with DEP to demonstrate how they could attain the agency’s objectives in operational efficiency and data utilization. As a result of that process, DEP commercially scaled one of the companies, Knaq, an IoT platform providing real-time maintenance alerts about critical industrial equipment and identified two additional technologies that show the potential for future commercial use within DEP operations.

Spanning 2,000 square miles, the New York City water supply system delivers more than a billion gallons of drinking water to 8.5 million residents every day. But as climate change and aging infrastructure present new challenges to water quality and resiliency, the ETL is helping DEP source innovative solutions that reimagine how the utility delivers service, maintains infrastructure and manages operations.

We would like to thank Commissioner Rohit Aggarwala, DEP Deputy Commissioners, and all participating DEP staff for the time they spent evaluating and selecting these proof-of-concept winners. We look forward to seeing what these six companies accomplish during their proof-of-concept. Stay tuned.