What can you create in only 24 hours? Last weekend, we tried to answer just this. Kolba Lab invited over 60 IT professionals to come together to develop smart solutions for Yerevan city using datasets from sectors ranging from garbage management, mobile operator’s anonymous call logs to managements records of residential building issues and utilities.

The Smart City Hackathon was hosted by Yerevan Municipality and organized as part of “Inno4Dev” project, which is funded by the European Union.

Participants split up into 16 teams working on all kinds of issues from garbage collection and waste management, to using augmented reality for tourism, tools for mapping and monitoring environmental pollution, including noise pollution, electronic management of residential buildings and so on.

Teams had only five minutes to present the results of their hard work, and another five minutes were allocated for questions and answers session. The jury panel included:

  • Mikayel Vardanyan, Chief Technical Officer of PicsArt
  • Eduard Musayelyan, Head of Union of Employers of Information and Communication Technologies
  • Arthur Petrosian, Chair of Computer Science Department  at American University of Armenia
  • Sargis Manukyan, Head of Technological Center for City Management at Yerevan Municipality
  • Sophie Mehrabyan, General Manager of MacAdamian
  • Aram Mkhitaryan, Founding Director of Helix Consulting
  • Aram Galstyan, Research Director of Information Sciences Institute, University of Southern California
  • Pierre Hennes, Partner at Granatus Ventures fund

According to the jury decision the following three solutions were selected as the winning ones:

1. The team behind Oorban was awarded the first prize (up to 5000USD for idea implementation) for development of an electronic management system for condominiums, which will ensure the transparent management of funds and better communication between local governance bodies and residents of the buildings. 

2. Datathon was awarded second prize (up to 4000USD for idea implementation) for developing a solution for smart garbage collection and trash bin allocation.  The team used datasets provided by Sanitek to track garbage collection routes, density of population and the number of trash bins installed in two districts of Yerevan. Based on this data, a model was developed that would optimise management. 

3. In third place was the Smart Space team (up to 3000USD for idea implementation) who developed a tool for monitoring quality of life in different district of Yerevan. The tool was based on analysis of data-sets on environmental pollution, mapping of residential buildings, data from mobile operators and other layers of information. This solution will support city management and businesses, providing metrics on a range of areas, such as which areas need further greening or greater access to public or private service provision units. For example, are there neighbourhoods that need more transport links, or that have markets large enough to sustain cafes or other small businesses?

Special awards from the Yerevan Mayor were awarded to teams in the following categories:

  • Best user-friendly solution – Triple E team,
  • Best innovative solution – Arloopa,
  • Best functional solution – Tip-Tep,
  • Best participatory and inclusive solution – Green Apple

Photos from the Hackathon are available on our facebook page. Follow us on social media channels @kolbalab to be the first one to know about the upcoming start-ups opportunities and public events by our lab.