Indiana Civil Leaders Inspire Developers at AT&T’s 200th Hackathon

We headed to Indianapolis on April 20^th and 21^st to host the Internet of Things (IoT) Civic Hackathon. The event also marked the our 200^th hackathon and we couldn’t be more thrilled with the experience and all those who came out to support the developers. There was an amazing turn out of 465 people including representatives from law enforcement and the fire department, along with EMS personnel, local law makers, and business decision makers. During the course of the weekend we had over 200 developers form 30 teams that entered apps to win their share of over $15,000 in prizes.

The theme of this year’s Civic IoT hackathon was public safety and solutions that could help first responders. To help developers come up with innovative apps and inspire their creativity we set up an equipment rodeo between the parking lot of Launch Fishers and the Indiana IoT Lab, a brand new co-working space specifically focused on IoT. Attendees could get tour a variety of emergency vehicles (including a helicopter) and even sit in the driver seat.

Before the event officially started, we held early bird technical sessions on IBM Watson, AT&T Cloud, Esri, and how to access and use the data sets provided by the state of Indiana and the city of Indianapolis. The hackathon officially kicked off with talks from civic leaders including Ed Davis, Former Commissioner of the Boston Police Department, Tom Arkins, Chief of IT & Informatics for Indianapolis EMS, and Congresswoman Susan Brooks, who emphasized the importance of FirstNet. She discussed how difficult and slow it was to get the right information to the people on the ground after the 9/11 attacks. People couldn’t communicate with each other properly, which is essential for them to do their job effectively. Now, 16 years later with FirstNet we can close the communication gap and provide first responders the vital information they need when they need it and the pivotal role that developers will play in moving the technology and service forward.

We’d like to take a moment to thank our local sponsors as well as FirstNet, Esri, IBM, and Orion Labs who had some amazing folks on hand to answer questions. Developers also had a great time using the plethora of equipment that we brought along including IoT starter kits, Arduino boards, Raspberry Pis, Raspberry Pi 3 + sensors, and IBM Watson hardware. FirstNet had a dedicated room where attendees could talk to first responders and get their take on the type of solutions that could help them do their jobs better.

Over the weekend, teams did all their work at Launch Fishers, which stayed open all night, and presented their apps at the IoT lab. On Saturday, judges consisting of three to four people included representatives from local civic services and those with technical expertise evaluated the apps and picked the 12 top teams to pitch their apps on stage. Here are the winning apps:

• Best IoT App, 1st place – $2000: DeafHack
  “When emergencies occur, many people may take for granted being able to hear sirens or weather radios to warn them. However, there is a significant need for deaf and hard of hearing people to also receive these warnings. Our project is built to alert deaf and hard of hearing people in their homes through Hue Lights light patterns to warn them when dangerous situations have occurred or are likely to occur. Through Node-RED, on-the-clock weather updates are sent to the Hue lighting system to enable these features.”
• Best IoT App, 2nd place – $1000: ONSET (On Scene Equipment Tracking)
  “Tracks equipment and consumables in EMT bags. The app uses AT&T LTE to push data to M2X and custom mobile application so that EMTs can track the amount and status of their carried equipment/consumables. The app can also track location to provide a real-time data to the administrator dashboard at EMT locations.”
• Best Mobile App, 1st place – $2000: Alert View Central
  “Central multimedia repository enabling first responders to receive alerts where they can see and hear from multiple sources in real-time on any device.”
• Best Mobile App 2nd place – $1000: First Volunteer
  “When it comes to a massive natural disaster, civilians are often the first responders. Authorities have been willing to take their help in past events like Hurricane Harvey so why not make it easier for them to track and manage civilian volunteers? First Volunteer aids first responders in offering quick assistance to first responders through registered civilian volunteers.”
• Best Data App, 1st place – $2000: GoGoStop
  “Use image analysis to prevent accidents at intersections by predicting when a car won’t be able to stop at a red light and thereby delay cross-traffic signals.”
• Best Data App, 2nd place – $1000: Report and Stop
  “Report & Stop is a web application that aims to solves the under-reported sexual harassment problem. The app makes it easy for victims to file an online sexual harassment report, which collects valuable information and insight for law enforcement. Data collected could be used for keyword search, crime map creation, and cross-referencing with other law enforcement database”
• Best Use of M2X – $500: Find Me
  “Can’t get out of a building in an emergency? Push the Find Me button to alert fire/police of your location, they’ll come to you. The apps can speed up primary search time, and once the first responder has arrived, it auto-clears the room on an incident map through an NFC chip worn on the first responder’s helmet.”
• Best Use of the AT&T IoT Starter Kit – $500: ONSET
• Best FirstNet App, 1st place – $1500: First Volunteer
• Best FirstNet App, 2nd place – $1000: Next Gen Emergency
  “A web-app that allows 911 dispatchers to initiate a request to use a caller’s smartphone inputs including camera and GPS for collecting time-critical information through visual observation and sensor data. This provides dispatchers and in-turn, first-responders accurate broad-scope situational awareness intelligence to assist them in preparing for, and executing effective emergency response strategies.”
• Best FirstNet App, 3rd place – $500: DeafHack
• Best Use of Indiana Data – $500: Incident Insight
  “We will combine crash data and EMS data in order to provide cross-functional insights. We will predict factors such as whether or not an EMS run will require the administration of NARCAN. The deliverable will be a web-based dashboard that EMS personnel can access.”
• Best Use of IBM – $1000: Next Gen Emergency
• Best Use of Esri – $1000: Find Me
• Best Use of Orion Onyx -$300 plus Onyx devices for the whole team: ONSET (On Scene Equipment Tracking)