The Smart City Programme and Challenge

collaborating for the future

In February and March 2021, UWCSEA hosted the Smart City Programme and Challenge at the Dover IDEAS Hub in partnership with Hyundai Motor Company and Kia Corporation (HMC/KIA). Over 40 High School students from both campuses attended the programme, which kicked off with an interactive lecture series. Delivered by experts, the sixhour launch programme addressed themes of new mobility solutions, cleantech, energy, new smart services and smart infrastructure in relation to smart cities.

Culminating in a hackathon on Saturday, 27 March at the IDEAS Hub, 11 teams of students were supported by HMC/KIA and UWCSEA staff as they created a business case for an initiative on a smart city topic of their choice. A panel of experts judged the final projects with students competing for prizes generously supplied by HMC/KIA. The combination of lecture series and hackathon gave students insights and hands-on experience of how technology is changing the world around them and how they can help develop viable solutions for the future. Congratulations to all students who took part. Thank you to our partners at HMC/KIA for helping to deliver this programme for our students.

“It’s so inspiring to hear young people’s ideas for the future and help them turn into reality. UWCSEA students took the challenge and ran with it, working hard to develop very innovative and exciting initiatives for smart cities of the future.”

DR. YUNSEONG HWANG, Vice President and Head of Open Innovation Investment Group, Hyundai Motor Group

WINNING IDEAS

Congratulations to our student teams: 1st place: SocioPonics, a modular, smart, affordable, and configurable hydroponic unit to promote social gardening and provide smart communities with clean and healthy sources of nutrition.

Rehaan and Winston (Grade 12)

2nd place: Smart Fitness, new workout experience through smart technology and infrastructure.

Nicolau, Pei, Rasmus, Samh and Shreya (Grade 11)

3rd place: Optimisation of tree distribution, using data analytics to optimise planting outcomes.

Aakash, Anvay, Uditi and Yuri (Grade 11)

”For the Smart City Challenge, our team used data science to optimise tree placement in urban spaces. We learned how to turn our idea into an effective business strategy and we hope to help foster more sustainable practices in city planning, architectural education, and systems thinking.”

Interested? Find out more on the IDEAS Hub website