Parking app wins Sydney trip for Indian students

An idea for an app to make parking easier and save fuel has resulted in the school excursion of a lifetime for a group of Indian students.

The team from Anand Niketan Satellite School in Ahmedabad is coming to Sydney next Wednesday as the winner of the Creativity Meets Technology IT competition organised by UTS and UTS:Insearch. 

Students from eleven states in four regions of India participated in the competition, which encouraged participants to work collaboratively to cultivate IT solutions to environmental sustainability issues.

The winners from Anand Niketan Satellite School, Mr Monal Babariya (group leader), Rajvi Doshi, Anamaya Garodia and Abhimanyu Tripathi, and their school principal Ms Nashy Chauhan, will have nearly a week in Sydney hosted by UTS and UTS:Insearch.

Their winning entry Spot the Parking Space was to develop an app that helped people find a parking space utilising Google maps. This app would save fuel by facilitating faster parking, resulting in cleaner air.

The Anand Niketan school group will spend a day at the UTS IT facilities along with a day at UTS:Insearch. The IT visit will be conducted by Dr Wayne Brookes from the Faculty of Engineering and IT and Ms Nikki Ekanayake, Manager International Recruitment, the masterminds behind the competition. The students will also take time out to experience "two days in the life of a UTS international student" as well as enjoy the sights of Sydney.

"The competition was devised to inspire students to explore creative IT applications to resolve environmental issues in their local community, or to tackle larger global issues," Dr Brookes said.

"Entries focused on a number of innovative IT solutions to minimise environmental impact, including clean air monitoring through apps, waste minimisation and management, minimising pollution from vehicles, food scarcity resolution through hydroponics, pollution monitoring mapping and a greener environment network.  As judges we were looking for solutions that incorporated creative uses of information technology."

The judging panel included Dr Brookes, Dr TV Vijay of Jawaharlal Nehru University, one of UTS's Key Technology Partners in India, and Dr Jamshed Siddiqui, UTS's Country Director – India and Chief Representative – South Asia.

Students submitted a 1500 word report describing their IT solution, how it would work and its likely impact on the chosen environmental issues. They were assessed on creativity, impact, simplicity and the ability to easily implement the idea.

"Competition entries were very innovative, illustrating the commitment of young people to finding workable solutions to environmental issues," Dr Brookes said. "We hope the competition has inspired youth to continue thinking creatively about using IT solutions to benefit communities struggling with the impacts of environmental and social issues and hopefully implement some in the future."

Four other finalists included DAV Public School Amritsar with Quick Response Waste Management; Vidyashilp Academy Bangalore's Urban Ember app to control home hydroponic gardens; Delhi Public School R.K. Puram's Greenr – The Environment Network for NGOs; and D Y Patil International School, Nerul, Mumbai's Pollution Under Control (PUC) app.

Twelve entries were also shortlisted for a People's Choice Award, which attracted 10,000 votes and 70,000 followers on the Facebook group. This award was won by DAV Ludhiana for their entry Breathing Better with Open Source.