Buying parking cards seems to be a major problem for drivers in the city of Sao Paulo, Brazil, since this was the subject of two of the six projects developed in the 1st USP Cidades Hackathon, held last weekend (November 9 thru 10) in Sao Paulo.
MundoGEO Web Portal attended the event to figure out how developers used the data provided by the Hackathon partners, in multidimensional and multidisciplinary ways, aiming to reveal information and relationships hidden in the data, through interfaces, maps, animations, web or mobile applications, which can contribute to the city management and the urban experience.
The audience profile was very heterogeneous, with students and professionals in the fields of Computer Science, Design, Architecture and Urbanism, among others. Both the participants and the organizers faced a recurrent problem in some public institutions: the lack of data standardization, which generated a lot of manual work in order to convert them into database format.
USP Cidades Hackathon ended with a lot of celebration after 24 hours of development. The six projects were then presented in the following order:
• Cidade+ – With this App, the user can find out the location of the parking cards sales points (Zona Azul) and, in a future stage of development, purchase them online.
• Posso Ir? – This app can be used by people who are interested in some location or by tourists who need to know how is the security of some area.
• SmartCity – App for choosing a point in the city and viewing some variables in the surrounding area (security, schools, health, pollution, etc.), serving business and public agencies among citizens .
• Smart Plan – This is a displacement app with a smart schedule, so the user is able to arrive on time in his commitment.
• Zona Azul – An app that also focuses on finding the location of the parking cards sales points. This App will be available soon in the Firefox Marketplace, and its next step is to enable parking cards online purchasing and the tax usage, by eliminating the use of paper.
• Brasil Transparente – Not focused on creating an app, but in data organization and standardization, so developers can create new applications more easily , with an API.
After the five minutes presentations for each project and the questions from the audience, a group of evaluators from Universities, private companies, specialized press media and the organizers, decided who were the ones that should be awarded.
The result was as follows :
• 1st Place: Zona Azul
• 2nd Place: SmartCity
• 3rd Place: Brasil Transparente
In addition to these awards, other groups received gifts from NEC and also a student has been selected to receive a funded internship opportunity, so now he can work with Colab.re development team.
Geo Hackathon
MundoGEO is preparing a marathon of development using geospatial data, that will be held from May 7 thru 9. This event will take place parallel to the 4th edition of MundoGEO#Connect LatinAmerica 2014 – Conference and Trade Fair on Geomatics and Geospatial Solutions.
GEO Hackathon will feature challenges proposed by the public sector and make available the data, software, support and infrastructure in order to support solutions development. The winners will be awarded and will have their work widely disseminated. Further information will be released soon.
