MAVHACK generates innovative solutions

CAMERAS on garbage trucks to help identify potholes and a new “Safe Place” accreditation for employers have emerged as ideas from this month’s MAVHACK summit in Geelong.

The summit brought together experts from across Victoria, who split into two teams to look for innovative solutions to common community “pain points”.

One team was asked how technology could be used to improve the road-user experience, with the other investigating how technology could create economic opportunities for members of the Aboriginal community.

The teams worked over two days, before presenting their ideas to representatives from councils, VicRoads and the state government on Wednesday afternoon.

The roads team’s concept would see roads data – such as information about traffic or hazards – captured in a variety of ways and pushed instantly to existing platforms such as Google Maps. This could cut commute times for road users, and for councils, create improved traffic management and smarter, more informed spending.

As well as cameras on garbage trucks, vision could also be supplied by private road users from their dash cams, and new car technology such as sensors could detect road quality.

The economic team proposed an online platform called Nyaal, meaning “open your eyes”. It would be a three-part system (online video channel, career pathfinder, and job finder) to help normalise ambition among young Aboriginal people, and provide guidance and access to culturally safe and flexible employment and education.

Discussion about the job finder also produced the added concept of a “Safe Place” certification for employers. This would allow Aboriginal people to easily identify if a potential workplace is inclusive and culturally safe.

The city will now work with the Municipal Association of Victoria, other councils and agencies to look further into which of the proposed solutions will be viable.

MAVHACK was part of the Geelong Innovation Festival and the statewide Digital Innovation Festival.

“Bringing people together to offer fresh perspective to some of the issues councils are facing fits neatly with our community’s clever and creative vision for Greater Geelong,” Geelong mayor Bruce Harwood said.

“To be a forward-thinking, adaptive city we need innovative ideas, and some of the proposals presented by the MAVHACK teams have real potential to make a positive impact.”