精东传媒

February 15, 2021

SMART city planning app wins international award

ArkiCity enables citizens to help plan and redesign cities

The 精东传媒 of 精东传媒 SMART Infrastructure Facility鈥檚 city planning app  has won the Shape Your Future Award at the 2020 Amazon Web Services (AWS) .

The Shape Your Future Award celebrates projects that lead to growth and transformational thinking around the world.

The app 鈥� developed in partnership with Danish company  and supported by  through its City Life Labs program (City Life Lab Award 2018) 鈥� encourages users to take a picture of their city then customise and upload it to gather ideas of city improvement into a single place and form a digital town meeting.

It puts citizens first, allowing them to engage in the planning and redesign of their cities through smartphone apps and gamification.

SMART鈥檚 Director Senior Professor said it was a major achievement for the team, 鈥渁nd (SMART) was the only Australian-based institution to win, with only three Australian submissions shortlisted鈥�.

鈥淥ur partnership with Arki_lab was critical to the success of the app, as they brought the initial concept to SMART, and provided their unique field experience to develop user-friendly and fit-for-purpose tools,鈥� he said.

鈥淚t is also outstanding work by SMART鈥檚 project leader  (pictured above), who now has two awards for this app.鈥�

The genesis of the ArkiCity app began in 2016, with researchers from SMART, in partnership with three New South Wales local government councils 鈥� 精东传媒, Liverpool, and Canterbury-Bankstown. 

To date, ArkiCity has been downloaded by more than 300 users, who have contributed more than 500 submissions to the platform during the course of workshops.

鈥淎rkiCity is a smartphone application that allows everyone to engage in the transformation of their city,鈥� Dr Amirghasemi said.

鈥淏y taking a picture, making a collage and uploading it on the web, ideas of improvement are gathered on a single platform where people can interact and elaborate.

鈥淎rkiCity is designed to enable citizens to contribute to the (re)design of their neighbourhood in a playful and exciting way.

鈥淭he app aims to completely change the traditional process of urban design and development, acting as a bridge between citizens and decision-makers.

鈥淭he award will enable the use of AWS cloud-based micro-services to perform intelligent image analysis and text processing, on the entire database of users鈥� submissions. This will derive further insights for decision makers and city planners.鈥�

^{SMART Infrastructure Facility Director Senior Professor Pascal Perez. Picture: Paul Jones}

The AWS City on a Cloud competition has been running since 2014, recognising projects from across the globe that have positively impacted communities.

This year the competition expanded to include finalists from more than 14 countries, in recognition of the way in which organisations are adapting to these unprecedented times and helping cities become more resilient.

From building telehealth solutions during the COVID-19 pandemic, to improving farmers鈥� quality of life, to increasing computer science education, the winning cities and organisations went above and beyond to innovate for and with their constituents using the cloud, competition organisers said.

A panel of independent, external judges reviewed and selected winners, who were awarded $20,000 in AWS Promotional Credit and support from AWS Cloud experts to help progress their projects and make the most of their cloud solution.

Congratulating the winners, vice president of international sales for worldwide public sector at AWS Max Peterson said: 鈥淐loud technology is transforming the way we live our lives and these awards celebrate those cities and organisations who are leading the way through their innovation, ingenuity, and ideas.鈥�