Utah Ignite has started a Smart Air App challenge that will kick off on March 1st, at 6pm. The kickoff of the initiative will take place at Silicon Slopes in Lehi, Utah. The Air Quality Monitoring challenges at the March 1st Kickoff will be presented to the tech & entrepreneur community and will have the chance to come up with solutions and submit final applications toward gigabit requirements and other criteria, to the kickoff. Sponsors will give rewards and funds to up to $40,000 provided by US Ignite and the National Science Foundation, along with other matching sponsors.
Glenn Ricart, the founder of US Ignite, will address the crowd at the kickoff. He also helps run the Annual National Smart Cities Conference and has been initiated into the Internet Hall of Fame for implementing the first Intern-net interconnection point at College Park in Maryland. This initiative is created to address Utah’s air quality. Utah Ignite tries to address the issue of air quality monitoring in real time at a more micro and neighborhood level with gigabit speed technologies. Using sensors, wavelengths in light spectrum, and high definition video will help to pick up increases in air pollution and differences of approach toward urban vs rural, and mountain vs valley areas.
According to US Ignite, once air quality can be monitored at a micro level in real time, then local, state and federal governments, along with businesses and citizens, can take better steps to change their behaviors to better improve air quality. US Ignite also analyzed an EPA study in 2011 that showed reductions in fine particle and ozone pollution helped the avoidance of 160,000 premature deaths, 130,000 heart attacks, millions of respiratory problem cases, and 86,000 less hospital admission. It also prevented 13 million lost workdays and 3.2 million lost school days. More information can be found at these links:
https://www.epa.gov/clean-air-act-overview/clean-air-act-and-economy
Make sure to RSVP for the March 1st US Ignite Smart Air Kickstart.