Central and Eastern Europe has a water problem that does not fit the old categories. The same river valley can flood in May and run dry in August. Climate change is transforming Europe’s water landscape: more frequent floods, prolonged droughts and growing pressure on water resources, and the institutions responsible for managing that were built for a calmer century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That is the premise of the EIT Water Hackathon<\/a>, running 23\u201325 October 2026 in Sofia under the theme Water-Driven Disasters in Central & Eastern Europe: Prevention & Management. Mozaika, the Sofia data-science company behind it, is inviting students, PhD candidates, researchers, engineers, programmers, entrepreneurs and young professionals from across Europe to a three-day hybrid event. Teams pick one of three tracks: protecting water quality and freshwater ecosystems; building water-smart digital solutions with AI, Earth observation, sensors and data analytics; or strengthening resilience to floods, droughts and other climate-related water risks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The format is deliberately unglamorous. Friday is team formation. Saturday and Sunday are work blocks broken up by checkpoints on career opportunities in the water sector, how to understand the real needs of stakeholders in the water industry, and how to prepare a good pitch. Then pitches to the jury on Sunday afternoon. Prizes are modest: \u20ac1,000, \u20ac500 and \u20ac250, plus the chance to extend Mozaika’s ISME-HYDRO platform with new features. Nobody comes for the money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What makes it worth the trip is the jury. It is the water sector itself, not a tech panel: the vice dean of hydraulic engineering at UACEG, a senior regulation manager at Sofiyska Voda (Veolia), and the president of the Bulgarian Water Association. A prototype that impresses them has a path to a real river basin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My role is two things. On Friday I present Meratch and Floodar: how a small municipality with no hydrologist on staff actually gets warned before a stream comes over its banks, and what the sensors, the data and the decision chain look like in practice. Over the weekend I mentor. Hackathon teams are usually strong on models and weak on the question a mayor will ask first: who acts on this alert, at what threshold, with what budget? That gap is where most water-tech ideas die, and closing it is more useful than any algorithm advice I could give.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you are a student or engineer anywhere in Europe with an interest in water, registration closes 20 October and remote participation is open. Come build something a town can use.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Central and Eastern Europe has a water problem that does not fit the old categories. The same river valley can flood in May and run dry in August. Climate change is transforming Europe’s water landscape: more frequent floods, prolonged droughts and growing pressure on water resources, and the institutions responsible for managing that were built … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":601,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meratch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meratch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meratch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meratch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meratch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=598"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/meratch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":600,"href":"https:\/\/meratch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598\/revisions\/600"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meratch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meratch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meratch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meratch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}