Tag: pilot

Smart Docklands Announces €50,000 seed fund investment into Four Pilot Projects to Address Community Need

Smart Docklands is delighted to announce the winners of its first Call for Pilots. The programme is delivered in partnership between Dublin City Council and the CONNECT Research Ireland Centre for Future Networks headquartered at Trinity College Dublin

Smart Docklands is one of Dublin’s flagship smart districts – a unique collaboration across academia, industry and local government to advocate for and pilot community centred technology innovations.

This Call for Pilots aims to tackle key community priorities identified through a community survey that was carried out in late 2023 and early 2024 where insights were gathered from over 300 responses. Smart Docklands ensures that smart tech is not just being deployed for ‘tech’s sake’, the programme works to engage directly with the community who live in, work in or visit the Docklands. This is done through in-person events and innovative approaches to community surveys.

After extensive community engagement, followed by a Call for Pilots four projects have now been selected out of 41 applications that were submitted to receive seed funding, with €12,500 allocated to each project. The winning pilots will tackle pressing challenges across environmental monitoring, community development, and antisocial behaviour, aiming to create a more sustainable, inclusive, and enjoyable Docklands for all.

 

Jamie Cudden, Smart City Lead on announcing the pilot winners at an event in the Dublin City Council Innovation Hub in the CHQ said:

“These pilot projects highlight how technology can make a meaningful difference in people’s lives. By directly engaging with the community, we’ve chosen initiatives to address the Docklands’ community concerns around sustainability, youth engagement and environmental concerns. We are super excited to be working with such an amazing group of innovators and entrepreneurs who all want to make a difference for the Docklands community!”.

Professor Dan Kilper, Director CONNECT Centre, Trinity College Dublin said: 

“The CONNECT Centre is proud to partner with Smart Docklands on the Pilot Projects, which play an important role in demonstrating the transformative impact technology can have when guided by community needs. These initiatives create solutions that address real challenges and pave the way for a smarter, more sustainable future. The pilot winners’ projects highlight this important work—congratulations to them and to our colleagues at Smart Docklands.”

The four pilot winners are:

  • UTS Technologies – River Liffey Water Sensors: This project introduces a network of sensors along the River Liffey to deliver real-time data on water behaviour, supporting a diverse range of users including kayaking and boating. The aim of this initiative is to bring an improved understanding and actionable insights for users of the river and to support more sustainable river management.
  • UCD – Count Docklands: Deploying a network of citizen science traffic monitoring, low-cost, camera-based traffic counters across the Docklands. This will empower citizen scientists to gather crucial data, supporting Dublin’s transport goals improving community engagement in urban mobility planning and traffic monitoring.
  • UCD – Craft My Street: Highly innovative youth engagement leveraging open-source geospatial data and Minecraft for crowd mapping through interactive multiplayers gaming. This pilot aims to support young people to actively participate in shaping policies and projects that affect their communities.
  • HoloGen – Immersive Graffiti: Leveraging AR/VR technology to teach young people about street art, this project turns illegal tagging into an opportunity for learning and expressing art in a safe virtual space. The aim of which is to reduce illegal graffiti and a boost in creative urban expression.

The Smart Docklands programme established in 2017 has a track record of collaboration where academia, local government, industry, and residents come together to address urban challenges through innovation and deployment of new and emerging technologies. The Call for Pilots is a testament to the programme’s commitment to ensuring that technology serves real community needs.

Smart Docklands’ first Call for Pilots represents a milestone in creating a connected, innovative, and engaged urban environment. By addressing key challenges through collaboration, education, and smart technology, these pilot projects highlight the benefit of what smart districts can achieve.

Smart Docklands extend thanks to Accenture, An Post, IPB Insurance, and National College Ireland for their support in evaluating applications. Their expertise and collaboration have been crucial to ensuring a fair and thorough process, highlighting the power of collective effort.

For more information about Smart Docklands and its initiatives, visit https://smartdocklands.ie/

Microsoft announces pioneering green hydrogen pilot project with ESB

Microsoft announced today that it has entered into an agreement with ESB that will see its data centre power control and administration building in Dublin be powered by zero emissions green hydrogen power. The landmark pilot project is the first time that Hydrogen Fuel Cells will be used to provide electricity to a Microsoft data centre in Europe, supplying up to 250kW of clean energy to Microsoft’s Dublin campus over an eight-week period.

ESB’s zero-emission Hydrogen Fuel Cells convert stored green hydrogen to electricity, with the only by-product being pure water. Designed to replace diesel generators, Hydrogen Fuel Cells produce no carbon emissions or harmful local air pollutants such as particulate matter, sulphur dioxide, and nitrogen oxides, which can have significant health and environmental impacts.

The groundbreaking pilot is part of a series planned by ESB in 2024 and 2025 to showcase the versatility of hydrogen fuel cell technology in different power applications.  The pilot is the first step in demonstrating the potential impact that hydrogen energy can have in helping to decarbonise the strategically important data centre sector in Ireland.

Commenting on the launch of the pilot, Eoin Doherty, Vice President, EMEA Regional Leader, Microsoft Cloud Operations + Innovation, said: “The green hydrogen project we’re launching with ESB is a pioneering first for Microsoft in Europe, demonstrating how zero-emissions hydrogen can be harnessed to power our digital lives. If scaled successfully, it could provide new ways of advancing sustainability in our sector and beyond.”

Lavinia Morris, General Manager, Microsoft’s EMEA Data Centre Operations, commented further: “This pilot project is another important step in our journey to transition to carbon-free electricity supply for our data centres, buildings, and campuses around the world. As we look to advance a more sustainable future, we hope to build on the success of this pilot project and continue to find innovative ways to decarbonise our operations.”

Jim Dollard, ESB Executive Director, Generation and Trading, commented: “ESB believe green hydrogen will play an important role in the net zero energy system of the future. We’re delighted to be working with Microsoft on this innovative pilot project that will showcase the potential for green hydrogen as part of zero emission electricity generation for data centres.” 

Microsoft’s Hydrogen Fuel Cell pilot project, in collaboration with ESB, is aligned with the ‘Principles for Sustainable Data Centre Development’ set out by Government in its 2022 policy statement by supporting the development of data centres that make efficient use of the electricity grid and delivering renewable energy.

Today’s announcement to harness green hydrogen is one of many steps and innovations that Microsoft is bringing to the data centre sector to ensure the sustainability of its existing and future cloud and AI infrastructure. In 2020, Microsoft announced an ambitious set of goals, encompassing all global infrastructure and operations, to be a carbon negative, water positive, and zero waste company that protect ecosystems by 2030.

As well as investing in innovative technologies, Microsoft is playing a key role in helping to decarbonise the electricity grid. In November 2022, Microsoft announced new renewable energy contracts related to the development of more than 900 megawatts of onshore wind and solar energy projects in Ireland alone. The projects will see Microsoft significantly contribute to the Irish Government’s 2030 corporate power purchase agreement (CPPA) target.

This pilot project also builds upon Microsoft’s ongoing testing and innovation in the area of hydrogen power, more of which is detailed here.

The Official Paper Plane World Championship is Ready for Takeoff

The world’s largest paper plane championship returns to Ireland. In Red Bull Paper Wings, across three categories, participants must retreat to simplicity without fuel, machines or engines and design a paper plane from a sheet of A4 paper and, dependent on the category, make it fly as far, long, or as artistically as possible, visit RedBullPaperWings.com to learn more and sign up.

Ireland will host three Qualiflyers and a National Final where the Distance and Airtime categories will be judged in person. Participants can alternatively submit an online entry in the Aerobatics category via TikTok. The national winner from each category (including Aerobatics) will be invited to compete at the Red Bull Paper Wings Final in the iconic Hangar-7 in Salzburg, Austria where the 2022 World Champions will be crowned.

Applications are now open with entries accepted across the following three categories;

  • Distance: Simple, whoever throws their paper plane the furthest, wins. At the last World Final in 2019, the USA’s Jake Hardy topped the field with 56.61m.
  • Airtime: Pilots must fold their planes for just the right aerodynamics to achieve the longest flight time. In 2019, Australia’s Cameron Clark snatched victory with 13.33 seconds!
  • Aerobatics: This category is all about sensational aerobatic tricks – in the 2019 finale, Ukraine’s Kateryna Ahafonova scored the only perfect 10 with her creative paper plane performance. Pilots don’t need to show up at a Qualiflyer, instead, they can get creative with their paper planes at home and share their mastery on TikTok using the hashtags #RedBullPaperWings #Ireland and tag @RedBull when submitting their entries. The pilot with the most votes from a national judging panel – which considers the criteria of social engagement, flight performance and creativity of the performance and video – will make it to the World Final.

Applications for Qualiflyer events close 30 minutes before each event start-time, with online Aerobatics applications closing on 22nd April. Qualiflyers will be hosted at the following dates and locations;

  • March 15th: TUD Grangegorman, East Quad (12:30pm – 2:30pm)
  • March 16th: DCU, The Venue, U Building (12:30pm – 2:30pm)
  • March 23rd: IT Carlow, Sports Hall, Barrow Centre (12:30pm – 2:30pm)