Elly Yates-Roberts |
Technology provider Itron has launched its first-ever Itron Smart City Challenge, inviting hardware and software developers to use its Microsoft Azure-based internet of things (IoT) services to build solutions that solve real-life critical infrastructure services issues..
Participants are invited to develop solutions that address the challenges faced by participating smart cities, Glasgow in Scotland and London in England. Competitors have been asked to help Glasgow find solutions to safely and efficiently manage the large influxes of people who visit the city during sporting events, concerts and conferences. Meanwhile in London, the challenge is to improve the safety of people along the River Thames in the city centre.
Competition entrants will be able to use Itron’s standards-based developer tools and integrate their solutions with Itron’s IoT platform to tackle these key business and societal challenges. This will include Itron’s Riva Dev Kit, which enables third-party developers to monitor data streams from any brand sensor in the Microsoft Azure cloud and use Microsoft Azure IoT, Machine Learning and Stream Analytics to analyse trends and predict behaviour.
The winners of each challenge will be given the opportunity to collaborate with the cities to refine their solutions.
“As a member of the Microsoft Azure Certified for IoT programme, Itron is working with Microsoft to advance interoperability of IoT solutions,” said Elena Vasconi, acting managing director of the Itron Idea Labs. “We are inviting Azure developers to create applications and test smart city and IoT services using the Itron Riva platform…The combination of Microsoft Azure’s capabilities with the Itron Riva platform will help demonstrate how modern urban infrastructure can be used to create smarter cities through automation, machine learning and predictive analytics.”
Applications are now open and will close on 4 January 2019. To learn more about the challenges, sign up for more information and submit your application, click here.