Hacks and the City -- Is Almost Here
Register by Wednesday, October 31 UPDATE: register by 4pm Friday the 2nd of November to reserve your spot.
As part of the SCIRA (Smart Cities Interoperability Reference Architecture) initiative, OGC and T-REX are pleased to present Hacks and the City: a Smarter Safer Cities Hackathon.
The Hackathon will take place on November 2-4 at the T-Rex innovation center in St. Louis, MO. The goal of Hacks and the City will be to design and implement new application ideas that use a variety of city datasets and data sources to improve public safety, responder awareness, and community resilience.
Those interested in participating are invited to form teams of 3-5 people and put together their ideas for applications that address one of four Smarter Safer City themes, and leverage data provided for St. Louis, MO and Virginia Beach, VA.
The themes are:
- Intelligent buildings and first responder awareness:
- a. Indoor navigation and evacuation
- b. Building systems and sensors for indoor awareness
- c. Mobile / wearable sensors and connectivity for first responders
- Urban canyons and street sensors
- a. Coverage of sensors based on smart lampposts
- b. Analysis and visualization of 3D city models
- c. Mobile / wearable connectivity and access to sensors
- Critical infrastructure resilience and flood response
- a. Predicted vs. actual inundation, new and old infrastructure vulnerability
- b. Evacuation planning and routing for storms and floods
- c. Flood damage dependencies and cascading failures
- Neighborhood safety and open / common space engagement
- a. Neighbor awareness of open / vacant / communal space
- b. Open space condition, community policing and crime occurrence
- c. Mobile / wearable sensors and connectivity for patrollers and responders
Participants may also register as individuals and be matched with teams based on their desired roles and theme interests. Suggested team roles include:
- Backend Developer
- Frontend Developer
- Domain Specialist
- Urban Mechanic
- Data Wrangler
- Hardware Hacker
Datasets relevant to one or more of these themes will be provided for participant use either as files or through API’s based on open standards. Many are already available from open data portals such as:
- St. Louis
- Virginia Beach
Registration is available on the Hacks and the City Eventbrite page. Information about available datasets, sample application ideas, and assistance with forming development teams will be announced on this page leading up to and upon arrival at T-Rex.
In keeping with the open data, open standards nature of this event, participant teams are expected to make their results openly available on Github with a license (e.g. Apache) that retains their copyright but allows others to join in evaluating and continuing their work.
Sponsored by:
Event schedule:
- Friday afternoon: arrive at T-REX and settle in, meet teams
- Friday evening: icebreakers, team-building activities, put together your team’s proposal
- Saturday morning: present your proposal briefly for evaluation and feedback by a panel of experienced judges
- Saturday all day and all night: build your app, with help from mentors and coordinators from OGC, T-Rex, and others.
- Sunday 11am: submit your completed work.
- Sunday noon: present and demonstrate your applications to the judges and to the other participants
Meeting space, food and drink, as well as connectivity and other support will be provided by T-Rex. Access to sensors and other dynamic data resources may also be provided.
Cash and other prizes will be awarded to teams in several categories, including
- Best overall hack
- Best use of data
- Best collaboration
- Best beginner hack
Criteria for prize selection
- Ambition
- Innovation
- Impact
- Teamwork
- Presentation
Information on SmartHub wearable sensors for first responders: https://www.dhs.gov/science-and-technology/ngfr/handbook
Example Projects
Examples of open source projects hosted by DHS to support first responders can be found at https://github.com/1stresponder. Any code from these projects can be used as a starting point for your project. If you want to use any hardware in you project, such as mobile phones, sensors, Raspberry Pi devices, etc., your team will need to bring those along yourselves. We'll be adding sample application ideas to these pages in the coming days, so be sure to check back here periodically as you put together your team and decide what to work on.
News and Updates
Want to learn more about open-source geo and coding IoT applications? Experts from SensorUp and Boundless will be on hand throughout the weekend to help teams to pick up these skills.
Want to learn more about resources and tech you can use? Check out an Introduction to Hacks and the City, and hear from Tara Reel about Virginia Beach StormSense. Learn about Sensor Things from Dr. Steve Liang and explore satellite imagery access in Planet Explorer (contact us for a free hackathon account). Pick up tips on visualizing 3D city data in a browser or cellphone with Cesium and CesiumJS.
Stay tuned for more announcements in the days ahead, including great hardware prizes, and cool stickers. We will have more outstanding technology mentors, and also members of the public safety community from both St. Louis and Virginia Beach to work with teams on what it takes to make a city smarter and safer.
Join teams of hackers, coders, engineers, community activists, and data wranglers as they spend the weekend in the wonderful T-REX collaboration space exchanging ideas and code, learning new tricks from expert mentors, developing cool applications, enjoying free food and drink, and competing to win prizes awarded for best ideas, teams, and demonstrated applications that up the ante on one of our themes.
- Intelligent buildings and first responder awareness
- Urban canyons and street sensors
- Critical infrastructure resilience and flood response
- Neighborhood safety and open / common space engagement
Register to attend the event here by Wednesday, October 31 UPDATE: Friday 2nd of November. Questions? Contact Josh Lieberman, Hacks and the City coordinator, at jlieberman@opengeospatial.org.
Further information can be found in this Meeting of the Minds blog post and this GIS Professional article. You can also subscribe to the SCIRA Newsletter.