6 September 2026 · Georgetown, Guyana
Eight days
to make the case.
BrownBalance was built for a question about Guyana’s coast. It won the inaugural Junior Category of Innovation Challenge 2026.
Explore BrownBalanceOffice of the Prime Minister
Industry & Innovation Unit
With SBM Offshore Guyana
Seven teams registered.
Three made judging.
Built with Damethri George
A coastal question.
A working answer.
The brief was clear: help monitor and protect Guyana’s marine and coastal ecosystems while supporting sustainable development. BrownBalance makes the trade-offs visible before a site is chosen.
easy to see.
“Missing information
does not mean safe.”
BrownBalance scores a point on the Region 3 coast against mangroves, drainage, shoreline, roads, and land already built on. Every deduction shows the distance that produced it.
When a data layer fails to load, the result is not assessed. The tool never turns missing evidence into a better score.
See the live toolThe eight days.
Hover or focus a day to follow the build. Every picture opens at full size.
MAT Solutions registers
Two people enter the Junior Competition. Seven teams register.
The problem is revealed
The first commit lands after the virtual opening session.
It scores a site
Thirteen commits, and the first version returns a result.
Twenty-seven commits
Comparison, reports and a palette rebuilt from the brand mark.
- five commits / one new name
BlueBalance becomes BrownBalance
The interface is redrawn around Guyana’s river-brown water. The scoring stays fixed.
Judging, and the deadline
Ten commits, then a twelve-minute presentation and five minutes of questions.
The closing ceremony
MAT Solutions wins the inaugural Junior Category.
The work had to be
legible.
All three versions of BrownBalance score the same site 35 out of 100. The rules were settled early. The work was making them understandable.
Read the full project note
“How might technology help monitor and protect Guyana's marine and coastal ecosystems while supporting sustainable development?” That was the question we were given on 26 August. We had eight days.
Put a second site beside the first and BrownBalance tells you what improves and what gets worse. It is not planning approval, an EPA decision, an environmental impact assessment, or engineering certification. The thresholds are ours, and we published every one of them.
With real land, real money, and the environment involved, admitting what you do not know is safer than false certainty.
Built with care.
Built in Guyana.
Michael A. Thom and Damethri George competed as MAT Solutions. BrownBalance remains live as a coastal development screening tool.
Download the original photo archiveWhat would you like
to make work?
A new website. A process that needs fixing. An idea worth building.
Tell me where you’d like to start.