Earlier this year the City of Melbourne issued an open call to innovators, entrepreneurs and businesses to help provide solutions that would improve safety for our city’s 920,000 daily visitors and residents.

The culmination of this city-wide search will occur on Thursday 23 May as the finalists take to the stage for the Open Innovation Challenge Pitch Night, part of the Melbourne Knowledge Week 2019 program.

Attendees will hear from the six finalists as they share their ideas for ‘safe mobility’ including ideas focusing on public spaces, transportation, safety at night and issues concerning city disruption. Many of the solutions will draw on data and emerging technology to address these critical urban challenges.

The finalists include:

• Can-i-Park by Sam Pinner: Parking signs throughout Australia are notoriously confusing, causing frustration and avoidable accidents caused by parking violations. Can-i-park is an easy-to-use smartphone app using image recognition technology to decipher parking signs.
• Project Nightlife by Jasmine Subrata & Simon Dall: Lack of light and lack of people are two critical factors contributing to safety concerns in the city. Project Nightlight will target these problems in a distinctly Melbourne way - through art. By commissioning local artists to create spectacular, must-see light sculptures, Project Nightlife will increase foot traffic and illuminate the city's most neglected corners.
• SaferCity Guides by James Litjens: SaferCity Guides combine open data and user reports to deliver safety information in an easy-to-use app. Highlighting street information, safety details and areas of perceived concern, SaferCity Guides inform citizens about their surroundings while providing a mechanism for reporting issues to local authorities.
• She’s a Crowd by Zoe Condliffe & Tess Guthrie: Harnessing data to influence and inform gender inequality debate, She’s a Crowd’s digital crowd-sourcing map allows female cyclists to share and access experience data to encourage greater participation and safety for female cyclists.
• Voice Search by Mike Huynh: Harnessing the power of voice and machine learning, Voice Search provides a single end-to-end platform for safe city navigation. The voice assisted journey planning provides navigational assistance, public transportation and traffic disruption updates and emergency response information, as well as details about the broader city environment and facilities.
• Zirkarta by Dylan Kendall: A delay of five minutes a day per person due to city disruptions across the City of Melbourne costs $274 million per year in lost productivity. Zirkata provides a single point of truth tracking city disruption data in real time - from emergency response to transport and planned or unplanned disruptions, Zirkata puts personalised data in the palm of your hand.

Prize winners will receive cash prizes to the value of $30,000 and in-kind contributions to help put their ideas into life-changing action. In-kind support includes admission into MAP's 2019 Velocity program, an early stage startup incubator run by the Melbourne Accelerator Program and an international trip to Bandung, Indonesia for a week-long curated program supported by Bandung Institute of Technology and the City of Bandung. Mentorship opportunities from partner organisations CQ University and Accenture, will also be provided.

Register for the Open Innovation Challenge pitch night to see these finalists in action next Thursday 23 May.

The finalists