Solving Seoul’s Urban Problems with IoT
The Seoul Metropolitan Government and SBA (Seoul Business Agency), the SME-support organization at the heart of Seoul’s job creation, are leading the way in discovering and commercializing services that can solve the city’s urban problems.
SBA joined hands with IoT-related organizations and companies – including the Seoul Facilities Corporation, global semiconductor design company Arm, and IoT service company Daliworks – to hold the ‘2018 Seoul IoT Hackathon’ (the ‘IoT Hackathon’) at the Seoul IoT Center over two days, September 15-16, producing excellent results.
With a wide range of ideas for solving Seoul’s urban problems brought to life – from a ‘fine dust mapping service using Ttareungi bikes’ to a ‘subway car-by-car information service’ and a ‘per-car passenger count notification system’ – a panel of six judges evaluated the teams on five criteria: differentiation and originality, prototype, applied technology, platform, and linked services. Combining these scores with peer evaluations, awards went to a total of five teams, and two outstanding individuals received the Excellent Leader Award.
An IoT hackathon is an intensive competition that takes a specific theme all the way from idea to working service. A total of 14 teams (8 companies, 59 participants) took part in this IoT Hackathon, working with an integrated stack that included Arm’s Mbed OS and cloud, Daliworks’ Thingplus cloud-based IoT service platform, and LoRa.
Notably, a month-long workshop held ahead of the event supported the teams in refining their business models through technical training, help resolving service development roadblocks, and parallel mentoring. Global IoT platform companies including Arm Mbed and Daliworks Thingplus took part in the workshop, and participants agreed it was extremely helpful.
This year’s grand prize went to team ‘Airea’ for its ‘fine dust mapping service using Ttareungi bikes,’ receiving the top award presented by the Ministry of Science and ICT. The service attaches sensors to Seoul’s shared bicycles, Ttareungi, to measure fine dust in real time and turn the readings into a map. Because it uses existing infrastructure, there is no need to scout locations for new monitoring stations – cutting costs – and since the sensors measure fine dust concentrations while on the move, a single bicycle can cover multiple districts.
Jaehyun Jung of Airea said, “The hackathon gave me a chance to think deeply about solving urban problems. If the fine dust mapping service using Ttareungi is successfully realized, I believe Seoul citizens will be able to receive more accurate fine dust readings.” Airea plans to build a prototype, attract investment, and develop the fine dust mapping service into a commercial offering.
Teams ‘Line 514’ and ‘Ang! Gaotti!’ received excellence awards from the Seoul Business Agency and the Seoul Facilities Corporation for their ‘subway car-by-car information service’ and ‘Guardians of the Seatbelt,’ respectively. Line 514’s service lets riders check information such as temperature and crowding for each subway car: temperature and humidity sensors installed in each car provide climate data, while CO2 readings from air quality sensors indicate how crowded each car is. By installing a smartphone application and checking this information before boarding, riders can enjoy a more comfortable subway experience.
Seokjun Moon of Line 514 said, “When I first heard about the IoT Hackathon, I thought it was an event with a truly worthwhile purpose. I joined because it is not just about achieving personal goals but about promoting the public good and progress, which I found deeply meaningful. If our team’s idea gets the chance to be deployed in a real city, I would love to refine the service further based on reviews from its many users.”
Ang! Gaotti!’s Guardians of the Seatbelt is a system that monitors whether passengers on large buses are wearing their seatbelts. It helps bus drivers effectively encourage seatbelt use and, as a result, can reduce casualties from unavoidable accidents.
Sunghyuk Kye of team Ang! Gaotti! said the pre-event workshop was particularly helpful: “Arm Mbed OS, covered in the workshop, provided an environment that made it easier to build the firmware for our hardware, and together with Mbed Cloud it let us use the data collected at the gateway more easily and reliably – that is what drew me in. On top of that, Daliworks’ Thingplus classified the data collected in Arm Mbed Cloud according to the commonly used sensors, letting us work with sensor data more systematically.”
SBA awarded prize money of 2 million KRW to the grand prize team of the 2018 IoT Hackathon, 1 million KRW to each of the two excellence award teams, and 500,000 KRW to each of the two encouragement award teams. In addition, for two combined teams separately selected by the Seoul Facilities Corporation, the corporation decided to provide 5 million KRW in funding along with the opportunity to run real-world tests at facilities it manages.
Furthermore, the three winning combined teams from this hackathon will receive bonus points with the Seoul Startup Hub for the prototype production track of the ‘IoT Product Commercialization Support Program.’ Multifaceted support is also planned, including granting foreign developers the points required for a startup visa.
Hyanghee Park of team iMaru, which won last year’s grand prize with Dr.Water, a personal water meter service, said, “A hackathon is an event where you form a team with people from diverse domains and collaborate on a project. To produce good results, you must be able to draw on each team member’s domain expertise for the project – an ability I believe is essential for all of us living in an era of sharing and collaboration.”
Guseon Moon, head of SBA’s Industrial Innovation Research Center, said, “The 2018 IoT Hackathon produced many polished IoT service ideas capable of solving problems in the city’s public facilities, and became an opportunity to find effective solutions. As the IoT industry – regarded as a core sector of the Fourth Industrial Revolution – grows ever more important, SBA will continue to take an active interest and support outstanding ideas.”
