First MakeZurich hackathon on 3/4 February 2017

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On 3/4 February 2017, Open Data Zürich, together with The Things Network and EWZ, is holding the first-ever MakeZurich Hackathon. Together, participants will work on meeting the challenges of a forward-looking smart city.
Opendata.ch is a founding member of the Open Network Infrastructure Association, which supports the running of the hackathon. In addition, the MakeZurich Hackathon is part of the MAKE.opendata.ch event series. Find out more about the event in the following sections or visit the City of Zurich’s Open Data Blog to read the original text.

The Internet of Things is on everyone’s lips: thanks to ever smaller sensors and processors produced in large numbers, an enormous number of objects and devices can now be connected to one another via networks.

For a city, this technological progress opens up many new possibilities. In a «smart city», for example, car parks can transmit information on their current occupancy, street lighting can shine at full power only when actually needed, and public litter bins can report on their own when they need emptying. The aim is to offer better services for everyone with greater efficiency and less energy.

The City of Zurich is actively pursuing this topic. Thanks to LORA networks, devices and sensors for the Internet of Things can be connected cost-effectively and for a wide range of use cases. This way, the radio (mobile phone) networks are not used and stable communication is ensured.

As a pilot project, a team from the Zurich electricity utility EWZ operates its own LORA network, which is intended to  enable IoT applications.

The The Things Network community is working in over 60 countries to provide an open LORA network for free use to anyone interested.

And Open Data Zürich is committed to ensuring that not only municipal datasets are freely accessible. IoT services that have been built should also be usable by everyone at any time.

Together, they are working to make the City of Zurich a «smart city».

Join us on 3/4 February 2017 as we tinker with new solutions to today’s challenges. At the MakeZurich Hackathon, innovative minds from the city administration and the community come together to make Zurich a smart city, working on seven challenges.