Almaty summed up the results of the first city hackathon

Out of 30 works, the projects of three teams were recognized as the best. On October 5-6, the first urban marathon of developers of smart projects took place at the Q-Lab Urban Project Laboratory.

The participants were given 24 hours for the implementation of an idea to a prototype. The task was to develop a prototype directly at the hackathon, which should be a new idea, without repeating or continuing the participants' earlier projects. The akim of Almaty, Bakytzhan Sagintayev, gave the start to the hackathon, who said that the city needed new effective solutions in all spheres of the city’s life support.

“Teams that propose promising intellectual developments and applications will be supported with the goal of practical application of their solutions in the city’s life support system. We will make a smart marathon an annual event, expand the boundaries and areas of application, involve more creators and developers, ”B. Sagintayev said.

The prize pool of the Almaty SmartCity Challenge in the amount of 3 million tenge was divided by three teams of winners of the competition: HCK50 (project “Salem Tourist” - 1.5 million tenge), GGG (“Smart bin” - 1 million tenge) and Mbionics (“Smart parking” - 500 thousand tenge).

Special prizes were awarded to 9 teams for their fresh and creative ideas, by the event sponsors Kaspersky Lab JSC and Kazteleport JSC. All participants of the hackathon received personal certificates. Information about the most interesting places and attractions of our city, about how, where, and on what to travel, as well as ratings and reviews of citizens can be found through the mobile application for tourists “Salem Tourist”.

According to the developers, the application will increase the attractiveness of Almaty as a tourist destination and provide tourists with a comfortable stay here. The creators of the “Smart bin” project, proposed a solution to respond to crowded trash containers in the city, in a timely manner, using occupancy sensors.

They noted that data on the filling and emptying of containers will optimize logistics: calculate the number of cars and containers needed to collect garbage, plan a route, reduce the amount of fuel spent by garbage trucks, reduce wear on vehicles and road surfaces, and optimize staff time. During the presentation of the Smart Parking project, the developers from the “Mbionics” team explained how operational monitoring of free parking spaces will allow the management of the process of distributing Almaty vehicles in parking zones.

In addition to improving the use of parking space, the solution will provide transparent control of cash receipts to the city budget.

In total, the hackathon participants developed more than 30 projects aimed at the development of the city. A cockroach food waste disposal farm, a biomechanical hand sorting garbage, a “smart” auto-sprayer for irrigating the city’s green spaces, a monitoring and search system for free parking spaces, a safety analysis of the city, a reduction in congestion, and other projects were presented by the participants to the expert jury, which included representatives of Kaspersky Lab JSC, Kazteleport JSC, AKF PIT (Tech Garden), JSC International University of Information Technologies and the Data Analysis and Processing Center of KazNU named after al-Farabi.