Swinburne team wins Motorola Hackathon

Emergency services stand to gain from a new app concept that lets citizens report natural hazards.

A Swinburne University student team has won the $25,000 Motorola Solutions 2018 Public Safety Hackathon prize for its hazard reporting app concept.

Swinburne’s concept enables citizens to use smartphones to capture images of fallen trees and other obstacles, and uses software to accurately measure the size of hazards. It also enables real-time reporting of road conditions.

This kind of data can be vital in helping emergency services to dispatch the most appropriate resources to an incident and work out the best and safest route.

The Victoria State Emergency Service (VICSES), one of four public safety organisations taking part in the event, set the challenge won by the Swinburne team.

2016–17 was VICSES’s second busiest year on record, during which the organisation responded to more than 31,000 incidents and provided more than 302,600 hours of operational support time.

“Before the hackathon we had no idea that we could apply the skills we are developing at university in this way,” said Nami Shah from the winning Swinburne team.

“It has been so rewarding to learn that our apps can help public safety agencies to work more efficiently while making our communities safer. We have gained great confidence from the hackathon and now plan to develop our app further by adding multimedia and social media components to it,” Shah added.

“It would be a dream come true if we could put our app into the hands of public safety agencies and citizens across the country.”

The hackathon took place over 44 hours and brought together a mix of app developers and emergency service organisations.

The set of challenges thrown at the contestants was the most diverse in the event’s three-year history.

One thing that became clear during the course of the event was the increasing need for new technologies to boost citizen engagement with public safety authorities.

“It is becoming increasingly important for emergency services to access more of the vital data that Australian citizens can capture using smartphones,” said Steve Crutchfield, Vice President and Managing Director for Motorola Solutions Australia and New Zealand.

“Citizens have an important role to play in protecting their communities, and by providing first responders with the right data at the right time, we can all have a profound impact on the future of public safety.

“As Motorola Solutions celebrates 50 years in Australia, hackathons, agile development practices and partnerships are helping us to develop new skills and capabilities while accelerating innovation and service delivery for our customers,” Crutchfield added.

Pictured: The Motorola Solutions 2018 Public Safety Hackathon winning team from Swinburne University: Anh (Ken) Tran, Nami Shah, Andreas Loannidis, Mathew Wakefield.

Please follow us and share on Twitter and Facebook. You can also subscribe for FREE to our weekly newsletter and bimonthly magazine.