Project summary

I have been building Sindio (https://sindio.net) for the last 18 months. Sindio reads a city's infrastructure in similar manner to the way a doctor reads a patient. Many cities across the world are dense or densifying and no one can tell whether a pipe is experiencing stress because it's old or because there are suddenly twice as many people using it. No one can even tell which pipes are experiencing stress or recurring stress until they break.

We built (within Sindio) a model that separates the ordinary wear from the stress that is caused by density. It also separates stress from recurring stress. And it does this across eight kinds of infrastructure. The model points to the exact spot worth fixing. Operators get alerts with a location, a simulation of what happens if that asset goes down, and a rough return on each upgrade. For sensing we use MFOSC, discrete FBG, Vernier FBG, and MEMS FP.

Sindio, the tool we have built to solve this, is already solving this in Nairobi as we speak, with 87% accuracy on recurring stress, monitoring over 29,000 assets, and we are currently in talks with Nairobi Water as well as NMS about a rollout. We will eventually take it to other fast-growing cities.

What are this project's goals? How will you achieve them?

My goal with Sindio is to ensure that we give dense and densifying cities both eyes and a brain, so that they are able to act pre-emptively, rather than only acting after things break.

And we are already at the first steps of achieving that, by having Sindio fully operational in Nairobi. We are also gearing up to scale Sindio to other dense/densifying cities.

How will this funding be used?

I'm asking for $20,000 to do two things: building our first MFOSC prototype, and signing one utility MOU.

The above two would, in a sense, de-risk the company. Afterwards I'll hire a CTO, because right now if I disappear, the company disappears with me, and then I'll bring a former regulator onto our advisory board

Who is on your team? What's your track record on similar projects?

On the team is me the founder and principal engineer, Jordan Mafumbo. I trained as a civil engineer and I have spent more than seven years on high-rise design and urban planning across South Africa, East Africa, and Europe. I am also an Emergent Ventures fellow, I hold fellowships with IRCICA and SPAB (UK). I am also a member of INTBAU, the Georgian Group, and the Commonwealth Heritage Forum. I have written (and continue to write) about infrastructure, usually on domestic connectivity, inclusive planning, AI flood prediction, and transport corridor pressure

The second person on the team is Amina Wanjika, who handles a lot of our geospatial work. Her background is int fields of urban morphology and resilience modelling. She mainly helps us with joining GIS data with ML for prediction. Previously, before joining us, she worked on the Nairobi Integrated Urban Development Master Plan and the Lamu Port–South Sudan–Ethiopia corridor assessment. She has been of so much help

There are two more developers, and they have asked to stay anonymous

What are the most likely causes and outcomes if this project fails?

The most likely causes might be issues like nobody signing up and paying before we run out of runway, the model struggling to generalise to some cities

I would open source the data and pipelines if the project failed, and a bigger organisation picks them up.

How much money have you raised in the last 12 months, and from where?

I have paid for sensors, servers, and 18 months out of my own pocket. Bootstrapping is exhausting