A smart city hackathon series to create new solutions for crowdsourced problems

We're excited to announce our partnership with Smart North Florida and the North Florida TPO to launch the Smart North Florida Hackathon Series.

We are working with a coalition of partners to produce a series of virtual one week hackathons to improve Safety, Mobility, Energy/Climate, Homelessness, and growing our regional economy in North Florida by solving community challenges through technology, data science, and design.

Using innovative and emerging technologies to collect, analyze and apply data to solve problems, we can address some of our challenges and enhance the region’s livability.

Vision Zero Challenge

The Smart North Florida hackathon is accepting submissions to the first challenge statement over a one week period to be reviewed by a panel of judges. Winners will be announced during a virtual meetup on May 29.

• ‍Date: May 22 - May 29
• ‍Submissions due: 5 pm EST, Thursday, May 28
• Virtual Demo Day and Awards: Friday 6 pm EST, Friday, May 29

Applying as a team is recommended but we also welcome individual applications.

Please join our Slack Channel for updates, connect with Judges and to team up with interested individuals.

Challenge Statement:

Cities globally are facing growing population, aging infrastructure, and budget shortfalls that impact programs, services and your  quality of life. Smart Cities are able to use innovative and emerging technologies to enhance the region’s livability including waste, water, energy, healthcare and transportation, among others.

Smart North Florida was founded by The North Florida Smart Region Master Plan to focus on implementing new technologies, integrated mobility, and streamlined data across public assets to define a regional vision for the nation's first Smart Region in North Florida.

Implementing new technologies and strategies will create a safer, more efficient, and more reliable transportation system to improve the region’s economic competitiveness, sustainability and quality of life.

This hackathon promotes our region's ability to develop new solutions and startups from our local talent pool and businesses.

Vision Zero Challenge Safety & Mobility:

It's time to think out of the box and get creative addressing pedestrian fatalities. We can start finding ways to eliminate traffic fatalities and injuries starting with pedestrians.

North Florida will have over 400 pedestrian involved crashes resulting in significant injuries and fatalities this year,as reported by Florida's Integrated Report Exchange System (FIRES) on behalf of the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles. Florida ranks in the top 5 nationally every year amongst pedestrian and vehicle crashes.

Traditional communication, PSAs and educational campaigns promoting use of crosswalks at intersections have limited effectiveness. Let's get innovative!

In North Florida, our roads are expansive, have high speed limits, and intersections far apart in many cases. Some construction is addressable, however the where should the region start to prioritize?

For this challenge, develop a web-based solution to improve the region's ability in anyway identify, track, communicate and prioritize safety which may include:

• identify pedestrian involved traffic incidents
• define characteristics of traffic fatalities and injuries
• define data and metrics that need to be collected
• identify near-miss traffic incidents which could have resulted in road traffic crashes (RTCs);
• explain data collection, crash identification and any other information to significantly advance safety by applying emerging technology solutions;
• collect, store and analyze the data generated for regional use and valuation of the data;
• utilize the collected and any other data to develop a risk profile of intersections and roadway segments in the North Florida Region
• cross-compare any forecasted or predicted data with known crash history at the specific intersections and roadway segments
• develop risk profile of intersections and roadway segments
• propose recommendations including approaches, methods, technology, equipment provision, or similar to implement regionally

Challenge Criteria:

Your submission should include the following:

Characteristics:

• Types of crashes to target
• Types of roads, intersections or communities to target

Product

• Design, working prototype, data model, or technology offering
• Address scalability including project plan, funding requirements

Communication:

• Submission presentation, video demo or written summary overview
• How will residents and governments know this solution exists?
• Will any additional partnerships be beneficial?

Participate with your team

The Smart North Florida hackathon is accepting submissions to the first challenge statement over a one week period to be reviewed by a panel of judges. Winners will be announced during a virtual meetup on May 29.

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