It’s been a year since the launch of the Athens Digital Lab (ADL) and our teams have been building a portfolio of stories to tell and impressive futuristic gear to display! Tales of smart recycling bins that reward you and systems that can predict the health of all the plants in the city’s parks are now a reality…
Let me start with a recap: ADL was created by the Athens Partnership and the Municipality of Athens, with an exclusive grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation and the support of two major tech companies, Cosmote and Nokia. Six startups were selected out of more than 110 applications, following ADL’s 1st open call in November 2017. The teams’ goal was to develop their ideas for city solutions into real technological applications and to do this they were provided with technical equipment, mentoring and access to real data sets from the City of Athens.
After 6 months of work, guidance and evaluation, four of them are now testing their products in real time in field trials across Athens. One of the teams, Recytrust, has designed and developed a smart recycling bin, which uses sensors and Internet of Things (IoT) technology to provide real-time data about recycling performance. Individual users’ waste behavior is monitored through personalized swipe cards. These innovative bins have been placed in 20 spots, including City Hall, as well as 10 primary schools, and aim to educate and gamify recycling for Athenians.
Another great example is Inagros, which has developed a green management smart system, at the heart of which is a project management platform that is connected with the sensors that are installed in parks, gardens and green areas of the city. Through these sensors, city management officers will be able to monitor and control water and fertilizer levels, and predict plant health. Fifteen sensor nodes have already been placed and tested in the National Garden of Athens.
In order to exploit the transformative opportunities from collecting and analyzing a massive amount of information by IoT devices, Thing of Me designed and developed a big data marketplace. Their pilot testing started and new types of data are constantly being uploaded.
The fourth ADL team, Smart City Spaces, has developed a crowd-based platform and an application that lets the Municipal Police monitor public space use. Through open
WiFi networks, by using data from smartphones that connect to these networks, public spaces and pedestrian foot traffic can be monitored throughout the city. This data can be used by the City for policy-making decisions, to identify popular areas and to monitor public safety. Also, Smart City Spaces has developed a “digital” ID for all businesses, enabling the city to monitor cafes and bars that use public space.
As the teams’ work progresses, the Athens Digital Lab is increasingly able to attract the best of the Greek startup ecosystem – entrepreneurs, business experts and researchers to share ideas and expertise. In early September, ADL welcomed Christos Kritikos, a San-Francisco-based tech entrepreneur – product-project manager and dreamer, startup coach at Emerging Humanity who has run numerous tech projects for several multinational companies, for a two-hour workshop on product management, exclusively for ADL teams. Christos also acted as a mentor, advising them on how to further develop their products.
What is more, in mid-September, ADL joined the 83rd Thessaloniki International Fair as part of the “Digital Greece” pavilion in mid-September, along with other Greek startups
and leading innovation hubs of the ecosystem. It was a great opportunity to present ADL’s vision on what really makes a city ‘’smart’’. Alexandros Kambouroglou – Executive Director of the
Athens Partnership and Antonis Papadopoulos – Project Manager of ADL, ran a workshop on how Athens is moving towards a Smart City and the pivotal role of the Athens Partnership in the digital transformation of Athens.
So, what happens next at ADL? Next month we will announce our 2nd Open Call and an event will be held at Serafio to present the results of the 4 current product/service pilots. We will march into our second year with new teams working on smart city solutions in 5 different areas, new partnerships (to be announced soon!) and a roll out of exciting events on entrepreneurship, tech and more by Greek/US/European leaders of the field.
Don’t miss a thing… Stay tuned and follow Athens Digital Lab and Athens Partnership on social media!
Author: Nicole-Savvina Kotronarou
Source: http://athenspartnership.org/news/athens-digital-lab-teams-news
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