Category: News

About Smart Docklands

Smart Docklands is a smart city testbed in the heart of Dublin’s Docklands. Established in 2018, the programme is funded by Dublin City Council and Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre CONNECT, through the ENABLE Research Programme in Trinity College Dublin.

Smart Docklands plays the role of ‘honest broker’ between government, industry, universities, and citizens of Dublin. We facilitate the trialling of smart city technologies by identifying real challenges in the city and working with diverse stakeholders to come up with impactful solutions.

About the role…

We’re seeking an Engagement Intern to join the team for 4 days a week for a 6 month period, to support Academy of Near Future, our smart city education experience for secondary school students.

Academy of Near Future increases awareness of connectivity and Internet of Things (IoT) technology, and promotes STEM careers, to encourage students from all backgrounds to become engaged actors in the development of public spaces as technology continues to transform cities around the world.

In this role you will…

• Assist the facilitation and timely delivery of programme workshops and events, in-person and remotely
• Travel to venues around the country for programme activities (subject to COVID-19 restrictions)
• Support programme design, content & evaluation processes
• Contribute to the delivery of sprints and co-design activities with students
• Document education activities with photos and videos
• Social media promotion of programme activities
• Liaise with programme funders
• Any other necessary duties as directed by the Smart Docklands team

Person specification

• Professional and welcoming presentation.
• Strong organisational skills and ability to work to deadlines.
• Comfortable working independently and in a team.
• Excellent verbal communication skills.
• Motivated, flexible, organised and able to use own initiative in a busy working environment.
• Creativity, curiosity, high energy level, and an enthusiasm for meeting and working with a wide range of individuals and groups.
• Experience working with young people would be advantageous (for example through student societies, summer programmes or volunteering)
• Willing to submit full Garda vetting to work with under 18s.
  If you have lived outside of the Republic of Ireland for more than 6 months you will need to get a Criminal Records Check/ Police Certificate from those countries stating that they have no convictions recorded against them while residing there. Unfortunately we cannot cover any costs incurred through this process.

The Smart Dockland’s Engagement Intern will be paid the Dublin living wage (€12.90 per hour) which is €412.80 for a 32 hour (4 day) week.

To apply…

Submit a CV and cover letter explaining why you think you’re a good fit for the role, supported by examples from past work experience, volunteering or study, to Caroline Boyd at info@smartdocklands.ie. The deadline for applications is the 14th of January 2022.

Our proud sponsor of the challenge, Virgin Media Business, are championing a healthier, sustainable way, of getting around Dublin

On the back of most Covid-19 restrictions being lifted from the 22nd of October 2021 onwards, our now 5 month old Dublin Cycling Buddy (DCB) app is kicking off the Virgin Media Business Cycling Challenge to encourage climate action and sustainable travel!

Challenge Details

• This challenge gives users of the app the opportunity to win some fantastic prizes throughout the month-long competition.
  • 27 days worth of prizes, dished out every week, based on meeting that week’s challenge criteria, and being raffled as a winner. Prizes include:
    8 x Lazer Compact Helmets
    8 x Grip Grab Knitted Waterproof Gloves
    6 x Bookman Curve Lights – Front
    5 x U lock Kryptonite Keeper – Sold Secure Bronze
• In addition to that, we’ll be having a grand prize of a Tern Link C8 Folding Bike, and 2 runner up prizes of 250 EUR vouchers up for grabs by the end of the competition!
• All prizes are fully sponsored by Virgin Media Business Ireland, where winners must collect in person at Rothar, 167 Phibsboro Road, Dublin 7, D07 KP96

After a successful market consultation process, Dublin City Council have released a request for tender procurement exercise to seek the best vendors and consortiums to develop an immersive heritage trail mobile application for Dublin’s Docklands.

Dublin Docklands encapsulates the very essence of the city’s unique maritime heritage. The maritime legacy of the Docklands is immense, exhibiting engineering excellence, industrial and dockside warehouse buildings and transport infrastructure. The Docklands has seen rapid development over the last few years and this regeneration creates a unique opportunity to protect, conserve and enhance its heritage.

The Docklands is an important part of the tourism offering provided to visitors coming to Dublin. With Fáilte Ireland announcing plans for a Visitor Experience Development Plan (VEDP) for Dublin Docklands, there is a strong tourism focus on the area now and for the years ahead.

This has been particularly felt in light of Covid-19, and being able to respond in a resolute way.

It is important to note that this tender is being done in partnership with Fáilte Ireland, South Dublin County Council, Fingal County Council, Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, Dublin Port Company, and Waterways Ireland – meaning that they too, can choose to engage the tender winner to create a similar offering in separate jurisdictions.

The tender competition seeks the following:

• Design, develop, host and maintain an Interactive Mobile Application, interactive map (that can also be used a wayfinding tool to guide visitors around the main sites or points of interest of the Docklands such as the EPIC Museum), locations, audio, video, Augmented Reality and other media.
• Detailed interpretation design and content/ story development
• Supply of all related hardware, should it be applicable, must be provided by the tenderer.
• Potential phased expansion of the Application at the behest of Framework Clients. This may take the form of single change requests or larger sets of project work to expand existing trails or the addition of new trails throughout the city.
• Provision of an optional drawdown day facility for Engineering, Interpretive planning/ Script Writing Resources.

Please visit the following for more information: https://irl.eu-supply.com/ctm/Supplier/PublicPurchase/188317/0/0?returnUrl=ctm/Supplier/publictenders&b=ETENDERS_SIMPLE

Response deadline is 18th June 2021.

Visioneers – a new smart cities education module of Academy of the Near Future – has won funding from Science Foundation Ireland’s (SFI) Discover Programme to support the delivery of  workshops to Transition Year students around Ireland.

The initiative is a partnership of Dublin City Council, Smart Docklands and the CONNECT Centre at Trinity College Dublin. The workshops will introduce participants to sensors and the Internet of Things with a focus on how this can address a city challenge.

Visioneers is one of 49 public engagement and education initiatives which will share a national investment of €5.2 million through the SFI Discover Programme, which aims to improve public understanding of science, technology, engineering, and maths (STEM) and engage a wide audience of people with STEM topics.

The announcement of the successful projects was made by Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, Simon Harris, TD, who said:

The announcement of the successful projects was made by Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, Simon Harris, TD, who said:

“I am delighted to announce the 49 projects that will receive funding through the SFI Discover Programme. As we continue to live through the COVID-19 pandemic, we are more conscious than ever of the importance of supporting the public to have access to and to understand the issues that impact our collective future, and the role science and technology can play in providing solutions. These projects will play a role in starting conversations about the role of STEM in society and inspiring our young people to explore careers in these areas. I wish all the recipients every success in the roll out of their projects.”

Commenting on the announcement, Dr Ruth Freeman, Director of Science for Society said:

“The SFI Discover Programme is a key part of our education and public engagement activity.  It aims to support projects at local level, as well as at regional and national levels, to stimulate engagement and understanding with STEM. Recently, we published the SFI Science in Ireland Barometer 2020. This research enables us to have better understanding of the public’s attitude to science and provides evidence to inform and shape how our education and public engagement initiatives meet the needs of the people of Ireland. These projects will play a key role in supporting the public to better understand the evidence behind challenges we have collectively face, and the choices we need to make in the future. We are looking forward to working with these exciting and creative education and engagement programmes, making the excitement and importance of STEM more accessible to a wide diversity of people.”

To learn more about the Visioneers project, visit Academy of the Near Future’s website, nearfuture.ie.

Dublin City Council has issued a Prior Information Notice (PIN) market consultation to gather feedback on the development of 5G and future connectivity in Dublin.

The importance of connectivity and telecoms infrastructure in our cities cannot be underestimated. In the current COVID-19 situation, we need to ensure that Dublin is future proofing its infrastructure to enable world-class connectivity that is fit for purpose in years to come.

Dublin City Council and Water Safety Ireland are seeking innovative solutions to alert Water Safety Officers when ring buoys are tampered with or go missing. Think low cost, scalable Internet of Things”

Is your company up to the challenge?

This is a ‘first of kind’ innovation competition (in Ireland) where you can apply to pilot and validate your solution with €10k upfront in funding. If successful, you may get to sell your solution to a national framework of over 20 local authorities.

If this sounds interesting, keep reading…

Dublin City Council are holding a market consultation to examine and consider the various options that are available to create and develop an immersive heritage trail mobile application for Dublin Docklands.

Dublin Docklands encapsulates the very essence of the city’s unique maritime heritage. The maritime legacy of the Docklands is immense, exhibiting engineering excellence, industrial and dockside warehouse buildings and transport infrastructure. The Docklands has seen rapid development over the last few years and this regeneration creates a unique opportunity to protect, conserve and enhance its heritage.

The Docklands is an important part of the tourism offering provided to visitors coming to Dublin. With Fáilte Ireland announcing plans for a Visitor Experience Development Plan (VEDP) for Dublin Docklands, there is a strong tourism focus on the area now and for the years ahead.

Combining Dublin City Council and Tourism Ireland’s appetite for innovation with the Smart Docklands testbed provides an optimum environment for real innovation within the tourism industry.

This market consultation in the form of a Prior Information Notice (PIN) will aid Dublin City Council in the development of a procurement strategy which will be utilised for a forthcoming tender competition.

Dublin City Council is interested in hearing from suppliers in relation to all aspects of the process including (but not limited to):

● Mobile Application Design & Features
● Use of Augmented Reality
● Storytelling & Interpretive Design
● Content creation
● Wayfinding
● Sourcing of information, images, video etc.
● Hosting and Maintenance
● Innovation & Development
● Pricing/ cost schemes
● Security and Data collection

Please visit the following for more information: https://ted.europa.eu/udl?uri=TED:NOTICE:106585-2020:TEXT:EN:HTML&src=0&tabId=1

Please note the following changes:

Closing date for queries has been extended to 20th May 2020
Response deadline has been extended to 29th May 2020

Change to Section 2.2 (iii) of PIN notice – proposed budget now €250,000

Dublin City Council through its smart city unit is exploring the use of new technologies, partnering with academic institutions and private organizations to improve quality of life, deliver more efficient and responsive city services and increase engagement with citizens.

Dublin City Council is seeking information from service providers for the provision of innovative solutions to better manage the ring buoys in Dublin and across Ireland. This may incorporate low-cost, Low-Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) sensors, alarm systems and associated solutions to provide information on damaged or stolen of ring-buoys in real time. This will also incorporate a mobile-responsive map-based platform to be used by water safety officers to identify which ring buoys are missing.

Dublin City Council manages approximately 130 ring buoys in Dublin. These ring buoys are located on the banks of the canals, the rivers, in the Docklands area and in the City Council beach areas. Unfortunately, approximately 15 of these ring buoys are tampered with or are taken every week.

Dublin City Council’s Water Safety Officer and Water Safety Ireland are jointly responsible for the monitoring and maintenance of the ring buoys in Dublin City. As it stands, ring buoy inspectors must manually check each ring buoy and associated equipment. All problems, including missing parts, are logged on a paper filing system. Currently new parts are deployed on the next visit to that location. Additionally, ring buoys cost approx. €40 each, so the replacement of approximately 600 in a year costs Dublin City Council in excess of €20000 per annum.

To address this problem Dublin City Council would like to engage the market through a Prior Information Notice to understand the solutions that are currently available before issuing an RFP in Q1 of 2020.

For more information and to complete the questionnaire, please follow the link below:

https://irl.eu-supply.com/ctm/Supplier/PublicPurchase/157991/0/0?returnUrl=ctm/Supplier/publictenders&b=ETENDERS_SIMPLE

We are delighted to announce that the Smart Docklands Programme was shortlisted as a finalist for the World Smart City Innovative Idea Award, as part of the 2018 Smart City Expo World Congress.

Dublin City Council and SoftBank Corp. have announced that SoftBank will join Dublin City Council’s Smart City programme and its Smart Docklands District testbed.

Both are committed to exchange knowledge and building a ‘Proof of Concept’ programme to trial a number of Smart City solutions. SoftBank will pilot their Global IoT (Internet of Things) Platform in Dublin.

The partnership aims to deliver real impact with an emphasis on solutions ‘designed to scale’ and easily transferable to other cities. The partnership will also enable SoftBank to work alongside industry, academia and entrepreneurs to jointly solve city challenges, improve service delivery while also delivering positive outcomes for the city and its citizens.

Owen Keegan, Chief Executive of Dublin City Council stated that “Dublin City Council is delighted to welcome SoftBank to join our Smart City programme. This partnership will help position Dublin at the forefront of Smart City innovation and to turn the opportunity of Smart City technologies into a reality. We are committed to building a programme of activity through ‘Smart Dublin’ and to concentrate pilots across our Smart Docklands testbed district which is emerging as a world class smart technology testbed.”

“We look forward to collaborating with Dublin City Council to share our rich experience in Smart City development in Japan and to also leverage our global IoT platform. SoftBank strongly believes it can contribute to Dublin’s development and future growth building out local solutions that can scale globally,” said Junichi Miyakawa, Representative Director & Chief Technology Officer of SoftBank Corp.

Michael Guerin, Programme Manager of the Smart Docklands initiative, was delighted to attend the 17^th annual Platform IoT Conference, held in Ho Chi Minh city, in November 2017.

As an invited speaker, Michael was delighted to have the opportunity to speak to over 500 delegates, from more than 100 companies from across the globe, about some of the key IoT innovations that have helped to make Dublin one of the world’s leading Smart cities.

While the topic of Michael’s discussion was ‘Smart Dublin – Collaborations both internal and external’, this highly prestigious and truly global IoT event represented an incredible opportunity for him to share the work ‘Pervasive Nation’ are doing as Ireland’s national IoT test bed.

‘Pervasive Nation’ is Ireland’s IoT Testbed, operated by CONNECT, the Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre for Future Networks. Headquartered at Trinity College, Dublin, its core objective is to build an Internet of Things testbed of scale which ultimately becomes a resource for industry, government, and academia in the areas of research and innovation.

Dublin, as Michael’s talk alluded to, is the perfect testbed for IoT innovations simply because of its size: as a city of just under 2 million people, it is both big enough and small enough to be the ideal location in which to pilot new city services and IoT solutions.

But Dublin’s success as an IT innovation hub, on a global scale, cannot just be attributed to its small size. In reality, it’s the result of a combination of different factors. For example, it’s now home to 9 of the world’s top 10 global software companies, it’s ranked as the world’s third best city for innovation and is #7 on the list of Europe’s top 15 biggest startup cities.

For more on Smart Dublin, visit https://smartdocklands.ie/

For more on ‘Pervasive nation’, visit www.connectcentre.ie

For the full speaker line-up, visit http://iotbusiness-platform.com/past-events/2017-vietnam-report/

For more on Platform IoT Conference, Ho Chi Minh, visit www.iotbusiness-platform.com/iot-vietnam/

SmartImpact is a network which allows the ten smart-city members to meet on a regular basis, to develop action plans that will make each of the cities smarter, better, and more aligned.

The most recent event, which took place in the wonderful city of Eindhoven over two days, was the penultimate network meeting ahead of the group’s final conference, to be held in Manchester on 20th March.

While meetings are always highly interactive and designed to promote shared learnings, their purpose is not to focus on matter so technology, but on governance structures and business models.

However, while out and about exploring this great city, I was hugely impressed by some of the smart initiatives I encountered during my visit – and the following three, in particular, caught my eye:

1. Strijp-S: the creative city

Built on the site of the old Philips factory, Strijp-S is an extraordinary new project which aims to make Eindhoven – already known as the design city – the creative city of The Netherlands.

The enormous property within which this project has been created, consists of several historic buildings, all of which have been transformed into an incredible urban area which facilitates living, working, and relaxing – all within an inspiring and contemporary creative environment.

2. Sorama

Another really exciting new technology I encountered during my trip to Eindhoven was the Sorama ‘sound camera’. This revolutionary camera, which contains 64 microphones, instead of the single microphone traditionally associated with a traditional sound level meter, can be used to detect aggressive behaviour outside pubs and nightclubs. As a result, this smart device has the potential to make city centre streets safer for everyone.

3. The use of scent and light on city streets

Following research which suggests that scent and multi-coloured lighting can reduce aggressive behaviour on city streets, LED lamps that can vary in colour and light intensity, are already in use in a busy nightlife district of Eindhoven. The street, which attracts up to 15,000 people on weekend nights, is monitored by sensors and cameras mounted along its length. Aggregated data on visitor numbers, noise levels, social media activity and other variables including the weather are processed to predict when the mood might turn ugly.

The use of scent as a means of management behaviour represents the next stage of this human behaviour & smart technology project. Research suggests that because smell goes directly to the brain, researchers believe that it has the potential to be an even more effective crowd control tool than light.

Find out more about the concept and rationale behind this ‘scent and light’ project at https://www.dezeen.com/2018/01/04/design-terrorism-talk-eindhoven-pioneers-use-scent-light-influence-behaviour-people-in-crowds/