Navigating a Greener Tomorrow
Sustainable Inland Waterways Design Challenge
Sustainable Inland Waterways Design Challenge
"Industry 5.0 meets the waters"
The Sustainable Inland Waterways Design Challenge (SIWA) is organized with the support of the Fondazione Alessandro Volta and local partners for the Bicentenary Celebrations of Alessandro Volta on Lake Como, Italy.
Briefing
Innovative solutions shaping user experiences.
Calendar and submission guidelines
Criteria, methodology, and scoring
Prize descriptions
On-line and on-site
Get the full briefing document here.
Context
Lake Como requires an ecological transition for its ecosystem, as well as leveraging a highly skilled industrial network and a tradition of naval services. This Design challenge focuses specifically on two critical domains: Vessel design and Supporting Service Design. Both need to take into account the specific context of the lake on Culture, Economy, Nature and Knowledge.
All entries must align with zero-emission technology, eco-compatible material lifecycles, and context-specific design for inland water systems, keeping Alessandro Volta’s legacy of pioneering electrical innovation alive.
Vessel Design
People Carriers (public & individual mobility):
Design or retrofit concepts for passenger vessels operating on Lake Como that ensure high efficiency, reduced wake impact, noise reduction, and total decarbonization (electric, hydrogen, wind, or hybrid configurations leveraging advanced storage).
Working Vessels (material transport, security, sanitation, ...):
Sustainable solutions for utility boats, maintenance craft, emergency/rescue vessels, waste collection boats, and the necessary on board services (automations, alerting,...).
Supporting Services Design
A non exhaustive list of use cases has been compiled, with interviews of a few actors, to open the realm of topics to address. See the USE CASE appendix of the Briefing presentation.
Inspiration: Use cases and Problems
Primary services (with immediate usability impact of the vessels):
Shore-side directly supporting infrastructure (e.g., smart charging docks, renewable energy integration, automated grid-balancing piers inspired by Volta's invention of the pile, boys, docking platforms, wave breakers, public services,...).
Secondary services (with indirect impact):
Design of secondary infrastructure (information systems, security systems, water quality monitoring, data sharing and coordination,...).
Timeline and Submission
Timeline
Preparation, reaching out to Universities: May-August 2026
Launch & Communication: September 2026
Individual and collective project developments: Sept-May 2027
Students exchanges and posting of Design Process on social media are encouraged.
Mid point review, and academic decisions for Submission: May 2027
Submission of Communication materials by Universities: 10 July 2027
Exhibition, Jury selection & Award Ceremony Week: 11 - 19 September 2027
The high-profile showcase aligned with the historical bicentenary program on Lake Como.
Submissions
The Sustainable Navigation Design Challenge is open to international and national design and engineering academia and students and research institutes. Both individuals and multidisciplinary teams can submit a project.
Submissions must be uploaded digitally via the official platform in a variety of formats, comprising:
Concept Board: Visualizing aesthetics, ergonomics, and integration with Lake Como's landscape.
Technical Dossier: Detailing propulsion systems, energy management, materials used, structural calculations, and compliance with safety standards for inland navigation.
Sustainability Report: A brief lifecycle analysis (LCA) detailing carbon footprint reduction, recyclability, and operational energy efficiency.
Judging criteria
Projects will be judged on:
Communication
Designed solution
The bigger picture
Design thinking
Communication
Each team has up to 10 minutes at the exhibition to tell the story of their project. The presentation should explain how the design functions, the subject it addresses, the science behind it, and how it may be adopted. The presentation and slides should be engaging while treating the project seriously.
How well has the team explained the design, the needs to which it responds, the science driving it, and how it may be adopted, and the process by which it arrived at the idea?
Oral Presentation
Live Dialogue
Following the presentation, teams will discuss and answer questions about their projects with the judges for up to 5 minutes.
How well has the team prepared for and responded to judge questions?
Visual Rendering and Physical Model
Each team is asked to create visual renderings or illustrations that capture the look, functionality, and possible uses of their design. Teams may also create a physical model or prototype that demonstrates their design work.
How well do the visual rendering and physical models illustrate the vision, including its look, functionality, and uses?
VIDEO (Compulsory. Judges will not score this component, but may refer to it as they judge)
All teams will produce a 1-5 minute video about their project. We ask that students be creative here: this is meant to be a trailer for the project rather than a recording of a virtual presentation. This video will be evaluated only as part of the Outstanding Digital Submission; it is not part of the in-person judging evaluations, but may be referred to by the judges during deliberation.
WEBSITE (recommended – Judges will not score this component)
Teams are encouraged to create a website that describes their project. This site can serve as a record of their work and a place to highlight team members’ biographies, achievements, and future goals. It also makes their work discoverable by the wider community.
SOCIAL MEDIA (recommended – Judges will not score this component)
We ask students to actively participate in promoting their projects online by developing creative social media campaigns. We recommend making use of Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, but teams are welcome to post on the platforms they prefer. We ask teams to tag @Volta27.org where possible.
The Designed Solution
Originality
Is the project original and does it approach the theme in an innovative way?
Design
How effectively and completely does the project respond to the theme?
Feasibility
A. Scientific
How well has the team demonstrated that current science makes the project possible?
C. Technological
What are the technologies that allow this project to be developed? How clearly does the proposed technology serve the intention of the project? How realistic is the proposed use of the technology in the project?
B. Cultural
Has the team considered how the project fits with or replaces current products/solutions? How does the project integrate into existing cultural values and norms in its proposed context? Are the Esthetic choices made reinforcing the proposition acceptability to its target audience and fitting to the lake Como cultural context?
The "Bigger Picture"
Human Impact
A. Adoption and Use
What factors might motivate potential users to access, adopt, or engage with this project? Has the team considered the people who manufacture and dispose of the product?
B. Scalability and Levels of Impact
Has the team considered how widely the project might be used in regards to demographic change and growth? Has the team communicated the intended scale of the project, and how can the scale of engagement change over time? What external factors can influence the scale and adoption of the proposed product or solution?
C. Ethics
How deeply has the team considered the project’s impacts on the lives of those who do and do not have access to it? How deeply has the team explored the implications of working with other organisms, if any, in their project? Has the team engaged with established ethical precedents when developing the project? If there are no precedents, how has the team proposed to move forward with the ethical considerations of the project?
Sustainability and Regeneration
A. Environmental Impact
How deeply has the team considered the project’s interaction with living environments? How might the project change the living environment, both immediately and gradually, locally and globally?
B. Resources and Life Cycle
How well does the team consider the sourcing and use of resources (e.g. water, feedstocks, living material, energy, labor, etc.)? Has the team considered the project’s entire life cycle? Has the team demonstrated an understanding of the project’s outputs, and does the project necessitate addressing waste streams through principles such as circular design thinking?
C. Safety/Dual Use
Has the team considered the potential negative effects of its project? Has the team accounted for possible harm to human health and the living environment associated with its product or process malfunctioning? Has the team considered how its design could be negatively exploited? Has it considered how to mitigate the risks?
Design Thinking
Process
How much experimentation and exploration has the team done and how well has this been communicated in the presentation? Did the team identify new questions during the process? How well did the team incorporate learnings into their iteration process?
Self Appraisal
How clearly does the team demonstrate an awareness of their own unique positioning, circumstances, and biases? Has the team recognized all the voices—experts and otherwise—necessary to inform the project? Has the team recognized strengths and weaknesses of its vision? Has it suggested ways to address them? What might next steps be to progress toward the next iteration of the idea?
Critical Perspectives
How clearly does the team demonstrate an awareness of their own unique positioning, circumstances, and biases? Has the team recognized all the voices—experts and otherwise—necessary to inform the project? Has the team recognized strengths and weaknesses of its vision? Has it suggested ways to address them? What might next steps be to progress toward the next iteration of the idea?
Our special thanks to Paul Rubery from the Bio Design Challenge (https://www.biodesignchallenge.org/), for his advice and for the judging criteria reused here and prize category suggestions.
Recognition and Prizes
Teams will receive prize recognitions based on their scores from the judges. These prizes recognitions will be indicated on the team’s project page on the Volta27.org website as well as in the design Como exhibition materials.
Entries will be evaluated by an international jury of experts in naval architecture, industrial design, environmental science, and representatives of the Volta Bicentenary committee.
All entries benefit from visibility and exposure, ie. institutional promotion channels.
Projects will be judged on:
Communication
Designed solution
The bigger picture
Design Thinking
See the Judging Criteria for details on the judging process.
Grand Prize and Runner-ups
Grand Prize: Terawatt Prize
The Overall Winner of the Navigation Challenge will take home the Design trophy, which will be passed to each year’s winners. Official certification by the Volta27 and challenge Committee, and institutional backing for prototyping or pilot testing on Lake Como.
Runner-ups: Gigawatt, Megawatt, and Kilowatt Prizes
The three Runner-up Prizes go to the teams with the second, third, and fourth highest scores with regard to the judging criteria and agreed by a vote and deliberation among the judges.
All teams are eligible for the Grand Prize and the Runner-up prizes.
Special Prizes
Special prizes celebrate the quality of the submission and the Design process. These prizes are offered to the teams who apply for them, with a short justification why they believe they have merits for the special prizes.
Outstanding Data Lake
Prize supported by TBC
The Data Lake goes to the team having demonstrated a significant and novel use of Data for their solution, enabling a more efficient collective use of resources and energy. Data Lake Prize is awarded only to Open Data solutions.
Outstanding Digital Experience
Prize supported by TBC
Outstanding Digital Experience will be awarded to the participating team with the best audiovisual presentation of their project. Judges for the prize welcome submissions across several digital formats, from longer videos to interactive websites, augmented- and virtual-reality platforms, and even video games. The Outstanding Digital Experience Prize serves to recognize the fact that quality digital experiences play a pivotal role in encouraging global innovation and adoption in sustainability development.
Outstanding Emergent Voice
Prize supported by TBC
The Emergent Voice Prize presented by NEW INC is awarded to the team that best explores and most clearly communicates an emergent view of navigation and life on the shore of the lake or communicates a social critique through the creative use of design. The team’s project will address the effects of a technology or system on users and nonusers, potential societal reactions to these effects, and ways to mitigate negative ones.
Outstanding Outreach
Prize supported by TBC
The Outstanding Outreach Communication Prize is awarded to the team that best employs compelling visual renderings and creative storytelling techniques to communicate the science, context, and impact of their project. Students are expected to clearly outline the development of the process of their project and/or their personal growth through Navigation Solution Design. Students are expected to communicate outside of their school particularly with engaging and thoughtful stories and convincing narrative on social media aiming at motivating interest for innovation and Design thinking applied to sustainable navigation solutions.
Outstanding Exhibition
Prize supported by TBC
The Outstanding Exhibition Prize is awarded to the team with the most engaging exhibit at the LCDF exhibition. Judges assess the clarity with which teams present their projects, the interactivity of the display. The show exhibits should convey the team’s process, learnings, and final results of their project.
Outstanding Art
Prize supported by TBC
The Outstanding Art Prize is awarded to the team that best provokes the audience into reimagining humans’ relationship with life on and with the lake, with other species, or with one another. Projects must be original work that challenge conventional assumptions and demonstrates mastery of a chosen medium.
Outstanding Science
Prize supported by TBC
The Outstanding Science Prize is awarded to the team that designs and executes outstanding scientific experiments or exhibits mastery of scientific techniques. The experiments and their analysis must be performed by the students. Students must show how their experiments informed the design of their project.
Outstanding Field Research
Prize supported by TBC
The Outstanding Field Research Prize goes to the team that takes the initiative to go out into the field and interview experts as well as potentially affected communities in order to find and understand the real social impacts of their project. Students should quantitatively and/or qualitatively incorporate the data of their findings into their presentation and discuss how these discoveries informed the development of their project.
Outstanding Collaboration
The Prize for Outstanding Institutional Collaboration honors the team that exemplifies exceptional partnership across disciplines, departments, or institutions in the development of their project. This prize rewards projects where collaboration—whether between schools, research labs, community groups, or educational programs—played a fundamental role in shaping the research, concept, and outcome.
Outstanding Instructor
The Outstanding Instructor Prize is awarded to an instructor who was chosen by their students for providing an exceptional learning experience during the semester.
Exhibition, Community, and Support
Teams concepts, scale models, and digital renderings will be given a prominent platform during a dedicated exhibition hosted in partnership with the Lake Como Design Festival leading into the September 2027 celebrations, ensuring broad exposure to industry leaders, media, and the public.
Social Media Useful Links
Contact
Exhibition
General inquires: info@volta27.org
Technical support for submissions: challenge@volta27.org
Press and Media Office: press@volta27.org
Support
FAQs for Students in construction.
UAL: Central Saint Martins
Piloting the Design Challenge at the
Lake Como Design Festival Sept 2026
Cantieri Riva, Laglio, Como
Snapshots from the journey of design and discovery, with a prototype briefing on Energy poetics and Volta27 - Navigation 5.0
