At this event we had 17 attendees on the Saturday and 15 on Sunday.

At the start, we had pitches for potential projects, and three teams formed. These were

  • Team Bus
  • Team Let Me Ride, and
  • Team YODO.

Team Let Me Ride

This team looked at the lack of taxis at the airport and the city centre, where long queues were often observed – and those waiting had no confidence in when or even if a taxi would appear to collect them.

Further updates on this team’s progress can be found on the Team Let Me Ride Github Repo.

We have also published the final update of the weekend from this team, which you can view on Youtube using the link below.

CTC32 - Team Let me Ride - final update - YouTube

CTC32 - Team Let me Ride - final update

Team Yodo

This team, which included participants from the sponsor, Absafe, set out to tackle safety at Aberdeen beach and look at whether AI and related technologies could aid public safety.

Further updates on this team’s progress can be found on the Team Yodo’s Github Repo.

We have also published the final update of the weekend from this team, which you can view on Youtube using the link below.

CTC32 - Team Yodo - YouTube

CTC32 - Team Yodo

Team Bus

This team looked at the issue of the accuracy, or otherwise, of data or information presented via the First Bus App, and the in-shelter displays on the street. In both cases issues were identified with

  • ghost buses which appear for a while then disappear before they should be at the stop
  • buses were shown as due in “10 minutes” but then either appeared in a much shorter or longer time,
  • buses which turn up but which are then “out of service” and sail past the stop.

There was a suggestion that the app and displays are using service schedules rather than real-time bus data.

All of this is hugely inconvenient to would-be bus passengers, and diminished trust in the app, the displays and the bus operator itself. It is also clearly a potential safety issue if vulnerable persons attempt to get a bus home and are left in the street.

In an ideal world, the app and shelter displays would be fed only from real-time on bus data which geolocates the bus, and an algorithm would factor in current traffic levels to predict arrivals. In a perfect world that data would be accessible as open data via an API. This would improve trust in existing apps, and stimulate innovation in a marketplace of alternatives, the better of which would flourish.

The team looked at First’s app, the Moovit app and other resources. Interestingly they saw that while both apps appeared to present real-time or almost real-time data, the First Bus app appeared to have the recently-updated route of the 19 bus accurately mapped, while the Moovit one did not. And both appeared to have updates only when a bus passed a bus-stop, not in real time. Despite being a paid-for service, Moovit’s app appeared to be slower in updates and buses jumped in straight lines between stops.

The team concluded that all of this set of issues amounted to a set of problems that could be solved over this weekend without participation of First Bus themselves, and that of other partners such as Nestrans, the local council, Stagecoach and others.

The team then dispersed into other teams.

Challenges

We will have a number of challenges – or you can suggest your own ones.

For example, one challenge is

How can we make Aberdeen Beach safer?

  • Can we use cameras along with an approach of image recognition / computer vision to identify someone in distress in the water, identifying whether they are adults, children, or pets.
  • If the system detects someone struggling / lifeless, can it automatically alert the authorities?
  • Assess the condition of the detected individual—whether they are alive or in critical need.

A hackathon – how does it work?

  1. At the start of day one we pose these challenges and others.
  2. Attendees suggest possible solutions.
  3. Those which attract support are used to create teams.
  4. The teams work together in agile sprints of activity to develop solutions.
  5. We eat together and have fun along the way.
  6. And at the end of the weekend we show what we have built together.

Sponsorship

We are grateful to Dtechtive and Absafe for providing sponsorship towards the costs of running this event.