Pakistan’s first ever Smart City hackathon is happening on 9th of March

MIT Enterprise Forum Pakistan, in collaboration with Center of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) at Information Technology University (ITU), is organizing Pakistan’s first large-scale hackathon centered around the Smart City initiative. Smart City: The Hackathon, a three-day event, is scheduled to run from March 9 to March 11.

What are Smart Cities?

Smart Cities involve the use of technology for increasing the operational efficiency, sustainability, economic outlook and quality of life for people living and working in a city. It makes heavy use of the Internet on Things (IoT) based technologies to incorporate advanced intelligence within a city.

While expressing her views, Areej Mehdi, Program Manager MIT Enterprise Forum Pakistan, said:

“Smart City: The Hackathon is more than a competition, it is a small effort to leverage the inherent smartness of cities. Our collaboration with CIE at Information Technology University is a nod to the various exciting smart city initiatives being researched and developed at the university.”

Such initiatives have a huge potential in developing countries like Pakistan. To this end, Smart City: The Hackathon provides an ideal opportunity for thinkers, innovators, entrepreneurs, and developers to find implementable solutions for all city level problems. Moreover, this would help identify young talent that can contribute towards intelligent cities.

Participating teams come from diverse backgrounds with a mix of students and professionals. Participants get to work on challenges they’ve not worked on before, in an effort to ideate, learn and hack.

What will the event include?

On the first two days, teams will be workshopping their solutions with DesignThink trainer Rizwan Zaidi. The workshops include different activities on coming up with new ideas, problem-solving and design analysis. These activities help participants study the defined problem areas and come up with solutions within the sectors of health, education, transportation, power, and environment. They will then work on prototyping/wireframing prior to a session on storytelling and pitching, culminating in final pitches on Day 3.