Digify Bags Grand Prize at the Road Safety Idea Hack Competition | GMANetwork.com - Corporate - Articles

Digify, Incorporated, a wholly-owned subsidiary of GMA New Media Incorporated, won the grand prize at the Road Safety Idea Hack organized by the Department of Transportation held recently at the Crowne Plaza in Ortigas Center, Pasig City. 

Digify Bags Grand Prize at the Road Safety Idea Hack Competition

April 18 2017

Digify, Incorporated, a wholly-owned subsidiary of GMA New Media Incorporated, won the grand prize at the Road Safety Idea Hack organized by the Department of Transportation held recently at the Crowne Plaza in Ortigas Center, Pasig City. The competition required participants to create and develop solutions that can improve the quality of road crash data collection and reporting in the country.

The Digify team, represented by Rodelio Arenas, head of Mobile Development and Gaile Sarmiento, Unity developer, submitted a mobile app solution dubbed, J.A.R.V.I.S. (Just Another Road Safety Very Intelligent Service), a driver companion app designed to help facilitate road safety for motorists. The app has hands-free and voice command features and provides data visualizations, guides, and safety statistics. It uses artificial intelligence (A.I.) and machine learning to customize the user-experience and improve data analysis.

“Idea Hack was a great opportunity to showcase our team’s talent. I always encourage my teammates, especially the junior developers and programmers, to have a feel of what it’s like to swim among the best in the field to harness our skills in ways that can uplift the industry and improve the local community at the same time,” Arenas said. He added that, “despite being confident about software, something we knew to a great extent, we felt it was a daunting task nonetheless, and pressure was high for us to come up with a proposed solution to the problem, knowing how good the other teams also were.”

Digify, Incorporated is a technocreative lab that specializes in sensor technologies such as augmented reality and beacon/proximity marketing, multimedia content production, and end-to-end software solutions for standalone digital and integrated marketing campaigns. To find out more, visit www.digify.com.ph.

The Idea Hack Competition promotes the creative use of information and communications technology, digital media, and road data in addressing road safety issues. Solutions can be in the form of apps, platforms, websites, visualizations, advocacy campaigns, paper prototypes, and maps, to name some. Entries were judged according to the following criteria: innovation and uniqueness, 35%; potential social value and market, 35%; and usability (user interface and quality experience), 30%.

The competition complements the UN Decade of Action goal of reducing by half the global road fatalities by 2020. Aided by the World Bank, a web-based platform called, “Data for Road Incident Visualization Evaluation and Reporting” (DRIVER) system, was developed for geographical spatial recording and road crashes analysis. At present, the platform is being used by the Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA), Cebu City, Dipolog City, and the Bonifacio Global City. The system has recorded over 4000 incidents since 2016.

Through the competition, the DOT aims to encourage the use of the DRIVER platform in creating solutions to improve road safety in the country. This is in response to the need for quality data collection on road crash investigation mechanisms and to promote road safety to motorists as well.

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