Turning River Data
into River Renewal
The Global Rivers Project converts open hydrological, geological and ecological data into actionable information for communities and their restoration efforts. We use custom, frontier AI tools to identify the most impactful interventions, then publish clear, concise action plans that empower local stewards to restore their watersheds.
See the PlaybookThe Purpose We Serve
Restoring our environment
GRP is a not for profit technology initiative dedicated to optimizing our water systems to best ensure our communities have a future. Built upon a foundation bleeding-edge Geographic information systems (GIS) and AI, we are building a custom model and topology for using LLM technology to protect our waterways.
Why Rivers First?
Healthy rivers feed cities, farms and wildlife. Yet they are also climate sensors: their morphology records drought, flood and pollution long before headlines do. By restoring river systems we regenerate wetlands, recharge aquifers and buffer coastlines—one watershed fixes many crises.
GRP will be a platform combining custom web applications and actionable, usable morphological intelligence tailored to specific geographical components of waterways
My mission
We live in very interesting times. While there are so many reasons to despair about the state of the world, we have extraordinary, accessible technology at our fingertips that can seemingly better our world. I'm not going to pretend that artificial intelligence isn't a controversial vector in a world seemingly losing touch with nature. Intelligent chatbots are not an antidote to real-world problems and AI has the potential to be destructive to our environment if gone unchecked. As intelligence scales with energy demand, we need to shift our efforts toward the well-being of our fragile ecosystems.
Rivers define our landscape, our history, our way of life. Having grown up in Ottawa near two extraordinary rivers—the Rideau and the Outaouais—I have seen first-hand how important rivers are to everything that comes in contact with them. My hope is this project will accomplish two things:
- Effectively provide specific and actionable safeguards to prevent pollution, mismanagement, avoidable flooding and rapid degradation to our waterways
- Effectively introduce natural and artificial improvements to water systems that do not interfere with the morphological and ecological character of our waterways.
— Phil James, Founder, Global Rivers Project
Explore Our Demo Maps
Please check out these demo maps that showcase the first phase of the project.
What GRP will provide you
Below is the three‑step pipeline we use to transform raw satellite pixels into shovel‑ready action plans.
Open‑Data Harvest & Cleansing
We aggregate public GIS layers—hydrology, land use, geology, biodiversity—and automatically clean, align and de‑bias them so every watershed starts with a trusted baseline.
Bespoke Waterway Analysis
Custom AI models score each sub‑catchment for erosion risk, habitat loss and flood resilience, then surface the high‑leverage fixes that deliver multiple co‑benefits.
Action Blueprint Publishing
Finally we export concise PDF reports—maps so local organizations can move directly from briefing to boots‑on‑the‑ground.
Measuring Impact
Join us as we scale an open library of watershed action plans and support local partners in turning them into living, flowing rivers.
Collaborate with Us