Coast Health Monitor wins Rep. Sara Jacobs’ 2025 Congressional App Challenge in California’s 51st District

When asked what inspired the creation of Coast Health Monitor, Raunav Mendiratta said, “I live in California and love the beach and water. Growing up, I spent loads of time swimming, surfing, and exploring the coastline. The ocean has always been a place where I can have a blast, get some exercise and just chill out. But over the years, I started to notice something was off—info about beach safety in San Diego, like sewage spills, pollution, or sudden changes in conditions, was just all over the place-scattered, delayed, or pretty well impossible to find. Families, surfers, and locals would all too often not know if the water was safe to be in until it was already too late. Sometimes people would have to trawl through loads of different websites and news reports just to figure out what was going on.

“That really got me thinking that I needed to create something that would give people a clear, real-time view of whether the beach was safe or not. I wanted it to be dead simple, reliable, and easy to understand. This tool, later to be named the Coastal Health Monitor, would give one the current status of what is taking place at any given time with regard to risks at various beaches, plus some short-term forecasts, so you can plan ahead. It also involves a community aspect where locals will be able to share their observations, such as odor, debris and trash, and more. In this way, everybody helps each other stay safe while they’re out in the ocean.

“I called the tool the Coastal Health Monitor. The app is super easy to use. You just chase down your favorite beach, and then you can see at a glance: the risk level-low, medium, or high. Check out what’s coming up, and you can even chuck in your own observations to help the community out. Everything’s just upfront and honest; you can see what factors are making the risk level go up or down, and understand why a beach might be off-limits on any given day. This project is personal to me. Living near the coast, I have seen just how quickly the water conditions change and just how important having reliable information is. Coastal Health Monitor is not just another app. It’s a way for people to safely connect with the ocean and for everyone to just enjoy the beach without all the worry.”