Winner of Panaji Masterclass and Hackathon on Smart Solutions for Smart Cities Announced
Under the India-EU ICT Standards Collaboration Project, and in collaboration with BITS Pilani, KK Birla Goa and the Institution of Engineers (India), Imagine Panaji Smart City Development Limited (IPSCDL) hosted application developers and students for a Masterclass and Hackathon to develop ‘Smart Solutions’ on 9-10 January at BITS Pilani, KK Birla Goa Campus. The aim of the event was to use open source implementation of oneM2M. Participants used data, information and innovative application of technologies to ensure improved infrastructure and urban services for the improvement of the quality of life of citizens.
The themes of the hackathon included water; air quality and pollution monitoring; transportation and mobility; climate change and disaster management; and energy efficiency in smart buildings. The Masterclass was conducted by a team of professors from the University of Toulouse, France enabling technology developers and students to build standards compliant applications for the Internet of Things.
The winning team was from IIIT Hyderabad, called the ‘the third I’ - they proposed a low cost IoT solution for indoor pollution monitoring. As their reward, they received a fully paid trip funded by the European Union to attend a leading startup event in Europe.
Henriette Faergemann, Environment, Energy and Climate Change Counsellor at the Delegation of the European Union to India, presented the winning team with the award to Europe. She stated, "It was a pleasure to see students developing smart and innovative solutions tackling air quality, water management, waste management and other sustainability challenges in cities. When these two components go hand in hand, we can develop solutions to India's urbanisation challenges which are sustainable in the long-term. The EU and India are cooperating on these issues, in particular within the framework of the EU-India Partnership for Smart & Sustainable Urbanisation, which has been agreed between the European and Indian leaders at the most recent EU-India Summit in 2017.