Best of Darwin
Best team out of Darwin Innovation Hub event in Darwin
Go to Challenge | 4 teams have entered this challenge.
Team Name:
Heat Syncs
Team Members:
The Darwin Heatsync Project
Project Info
Team Name
Heat Syncs
Team Members
5 members with unpublished profiles.
Project Description
The Darwin Heatsync Project is all about harnessing the power of citizen science to drive solutions for a cooler, healthier, more connected and more economically viable Darwin.
Data Story
Darwin is known for being a few things – and “hot and sticky” feature high on everyone’s lists. But we’re also known for our gorgeous sunsets, incredible nature and having the best weather in the country whenever our southern friends are freezing over, or even having their January heat wave.
So where are the real hotspots and coolspots of Darwin?
Now famous aerial photos of pre and post cyclone Marcus, tell a story of vastly reduced greenery in the city of Darwin. Heat maps have not been created for the post-Marcus area, and we also lack more precise heat data from our key recreational and transport spots.
The Darwin Heatsync Project is taking existing open data sets such as car parks, bike paths, tree cover and the greater Darwin map, and overlaying it with new, point to point real-time temperature and humidity data.
The new data is citizen driven. Students and other enthusiasts are coached to build our networked and gps enabled climate sensing modules, using the Internet of Things. These modules will be hosted in multiple locations in Darwin CBD and beyond.
Our website heatsyncingdarwin.net allows residents and visitors to find out where the best (coolest) picnic spots are, the shadiest spots for exercise and where more trees are needed. This means more people will participate in outdoor recreation as they can easily locate the coolest spots nearest to them. They will also be motivated to participate in greening the city initiatives as they can see from our map the difference it will make in cooling the city.
The Darwin city authority will benefit by gaining Citizen generated feedback on the best spots for future constructions of green spaces, shade infrastructure, transport routes and recreational zones.
The climate sensors can be incorporated into Council’s Switching on Darwin programme. CoD intends to conduct microclimate monitoring, including temperature and humidity data at city traffic intersections. The Darwin Heat Sync Project proposes using our modules at each intersection, at various buildings including offices, schools, shops, community buildings and apartments, and at regular smart street-lighting pole intervals throughout Darwin CBD. The modules will be delivered through a citizen education and engagement programme, and the public will be able to visualise real-time climate monitoring. The Darwin Heatsync project will therefore help CoD to actively engage with residents in cooling off their community.
As future functionality, the website or app will permit users to input data on green spaces that they create, and apply for a financial gardening incentive. This can be used particularly to encourage small gardens in apartments in Darwin CBD.
A cooler Darwin, and one that has known and available cool spots, has many positive implications for residents’ health, tourism, business and community engagement.
Team DataSets
Parks and Facilities Map
Description of Use We want an overlay to list all the facilities in the equipment but ran out of time but would like to do for a new iteration of this project Ideally when the marker is clicked access to a load of meta data would be available. the kml file stores all the properties in extended data tag and extended data is not accessible in kmlevent handler because google api simply doesn't support it, or more likely i haven't worked out how to extract. A future challenge!!
Citizen Science Dataloggers
Description of Use Heat-syncing Darwin is all about harnessing the power of citizen science to drive solutions for a cooler, healthier, more connected and more economically viable Darwin. By getting hundreds of these dataloggers around darwin we can get an accurate idea of the heat load around Darwin
CoD Walkways
Description of Use An overlay on our map which allows people to find and discover walkways (often connecting hidden culdasacs
Darwin Tree Cover Geovision
Description of Use We are interested in how 'green' Darwin is. To be honest this was a disappointing data set with very little detail. i used it in a test render here: http://overcast.net.au/installations/govhack18/gmapjsAPI_kml_layer.html we really want to use a similar layer that has more detailed data and consider it necessary for our project, while it wasn't included in the final map as it added very little, it has been left in here for its potential
Park Water use
Description of Use We think it's possible that the more water you pour on parks the greener (and cooler) they will be. We thought it would be interesting to corroborate this data with our onsite local measurement of temperature and humidity. It is used in an overlay for map spatial map of our dataloggers
CoD parks
Description of Use This is used as an overlay on the map of the dataloggers. We are assuming that the areas around parks will be cooler and we want our science science data to corroborate this. We also want people to head to the cooler park areas, so they need to know where they are. Citizens, even Darwin born and bred can always discover new green spaces
Challenge Entries
Healthy Communities Challenge
How might we assist councils to build healthier and stronger communities?
Go to Challenge | 49 teams have entered this challenge.
Make Darwin the coolest city around
Both locals and visitors have many reasons to love Darwin, and a big reason being for its tropical weather. The Darwin climate is perfect for engaging in recreational activities on the water and in the outback. However, this same weather makes it difficult to enjoy visits into the Darwin CBD.
Go to Challenge | 5 teams have entered this challenge.
More than apps and maps: help government decide with data
How can we combine data to help government make their big and small decisions? Government makes decisions every day—with long term consequences such as the location of a school, or on a small scale such as the rostering of helpdesk staff.
Go to Challenge | 58 teams have entered this challenge.
Connecting the health and fitness community in the CBD
Who needs to get fit? All of us! Darwin has many fitness enthusiasts who use the city and its various parks and equipment to complement their activities. City of Darwin believes technology and innovation can support our community to stay active throughout the year.
Go to Challenge | 5 teams have entered this challenge.