15 October 2025 - The University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL), in partnership with The Crown Estate, hosted a one-day Water Hack Day on 15 October 2025, bringing together over 60 innovators, sector experts, entrepreneurs, policy makers and academia to co-design bold solutions for upstream water pollution and demand.
The challenge
Urbanisation, changing land use, and climate pressures are increasing stress on freshwater systems. Downstream pollution - from agriculture, run-off, sewage, highways and development - is rising. Meeting these challenges requires innovative solutions, systems approaches, and cross-sector collaboration.
The Hack Day aimed to:
share insights on pressures within current water systems
explore data challenges and use case opportunities
highlight emerging technologies and innovation
convene multi-stakeholder sprints to co-develop practical solutions
understand the role of nature positive business models in delivering economic and environmental benefits
Opening and keynote
Opening the event Zoë Loughlin, Programme Manager for CISL’s Canopy, called on participants to act as collaborators in co-defining and solving upstream water challenges.
Cate Lamb, Strategic Advisor on Water Security and Freshwater Strategy Specialist at UNEP, shared a powerful keynote speech, in which she pointed to the revival of Liverpool’s River Mersey as a symbol for hope, and called for collaboration and ambition to redesign water and land systems so that communities, businesses, and nature all thrive together.
“We inherited infrastructures and incentives that reward short-term efficiency over long-term fairness. We measure profit, not regeneration. We build silos between sectors when what we need are confluences.
That’s why today’s hack matters. Because what’s at stake isn’t just how to fix leaks or build smarter pipes. It’s whether we can design systems that recognise water as the great connector — of ecosystems, economies, and people.”
Systems panel: diagnosing upstream challenges
A subsequent panel featuring Dr Iris Kramer (ArchAI), Grant Rudgley (The Biodiversity Consultancy), Cate Lamb, and Peter Lawrence (The Crown Estate), and chaired by James Cole (CISL) explored barriers to progress — from governance complexity and equity issues to data readiness and financial incentives.
Case studies: The Crown Estate’s vision in practice
The Crown Estate teams shared case studies reflecting the Crown’s Nature Recovery Ambition, highlighting the opportunity for innovation in their goal to protect and restore freshwater, marine and coastal systems, and sharing insight on some the approaches they have taken to date, and challenges in scaling solutions, across their urban and rural asset portfolio.
Innovation showcase
A highlight of the day was the Innovation Showcase, where seven organisations presented water-positive and pollution-reduction technologies and approaches:
Biomet.Life (Andre Hadji-Thomas) - an AI + data visualisation platform linking biodiversity and water insights
Plastic-i (Sharon Rachel Manu) - Bloomcast™, a predictive satellite/AI tool to monitor and forecast algal blooms in freshwater systems
BioBright (Vanessa Giorgia Barzasi) - integrating algae cultivation and real-time pollutant monitoring to purify water and capture CO₂
Furnace Brook Aquatic & Ecosystem Restoration (Kelly Price) - demonstrating a living lab approach to apply nature-based solutions to polluted waterways
Agrow Analytics (Jimena Szpanierman) - linking corporate water foot printing with local agricultural practices and watershed restoration
Isle Utilities (Dr Jo Burgess) - addressing the “pilot purgatory” challenge by helping promising innovations scale through implementation support
WOTA Corp (Tomohito Okuda) - rethinking water systems via structural, scalable solutions
These showcases illustrated how innovation at the interface of technology, biology, data and ecosystem thinking can address upstream water challenges.
Innovation sprints & pitches
Participants then joined thematic sprints on data and diagnostics, water-positive urban development, and agricultural pollution, culminating in collaborative pitches for scalable solutions.
Reflections and next steps
The Hack Day offered a compelling demonstration of the power of cross-sector, systems-level innovation in action. For CISL, it underscored how our innovation services and expertise can support organisations in co-creating solutions to climate and nature challenges.
This hack day also gave CISL a valuable chance to test our thinking around nature-positive business models. It directly links with our work on the A‑Track project - a four-year initiative designed to accelerate business, financial and government action for nature.
We used the day’s insights to identify where innovation for nature-positive solutions has the greatest opportunity to scale, and to inform how future accelerator and pilot collaborations can support startups and business models emerging from A-Track’s framework.