Dublin City Council and Enterprise Ireland have announced €100k of innovation procurement funding to help scale up cycling in the capital.
Four technology companies have been awarded €100k to develop smart technology solutions to help promote the use of bicycles in Dublin.
The projects are focused on assisting the increase of bicycle usage, gathering better data to understand cyclist behaviour and helping deter bicycle theft.
The money was provided by Dublin City Council and Enterprise Ireland as part of the Smart Dublin Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR), launched in March 2016.
This is phase two of funding for the SBIR programme; a joint initiative between Smart Dublin / Dublin City Council and Enterprise Ireland, aimed at making the capital a healthier, more liveable city.
Six months ago, phase one of the SBIR competition saw five small businesses receive €12,500 in funding to research and demonstrate the viability of their Smart solution. Four of these companies have now been chosen to work with the city council to pilot their solutions over the next three to six months. The selected companies and their smart solutions are:
The selected companies will pilot their smart solutions over the next three to six months.
Among the chosen ideas is BikeLook, which monitors bicycle usage and deters and detects bicycle theft.
Another selected idea is the Liberty Bell from Fluidedge which enables cyclists to record actual or perceived obstacles to aid safe cycling in Dublin.
A tracker, called See.Sense, allows cyclists to collect anonymised crowd-sourced data, including the identification of road surface conditions and collision and near-miss hotspot areas is another idea proceeding to the next phase.
The fourth is Smartcharge, a tracking, logging and data harvesting system for use with bicycles in an urban area aiding the cyclist in predicting the ease of a journey, safety along the way and creating a secure parking facility at the end of the journey.
Speaking at the announcement, Lord Mayor of Dublin Brendan Carr said “I really hope that the successful companies make the most of the opportunity over the coming months to work with the city and develop smart technologies that get more people cycling safely in the city. Phase 2 which comes with €25,000 funding provides the companies with a great opportunity to showcase their products and hopefully to scale up their solutions in cities across the world”.
Kevin Sherry, Enterprise Ireland added, “Enterprise Ireland is delighted to collaborate with Dublin City Council to support the Phase 2 winners. The quality of progress made to date and level of innovation demonstrated by the companies is a testament to the value of this new type of procurement process. Our intention is to scale up the SBIR initiative through 2017 to extend to other public bodies across Ireland”.
