“Every month around 25,000 vehicles are added to the already overcrowded roads. The vehicle population on our road shows no sign of decreasing. Overcrowded roads is one of the reasons for the increase in the number of road accidents. Time has come for us to find a solution to the traffic woes,” said A. Amalraj, Commissioner of Police, Coimbatore District. He was addressing a gathering of students, entrepreneurs, and start-up founders at the inauguration of Smart City Hackathon at KGiSL.

Smart City Hackathon is a contest that is open to students, professionals, entrepreneurs, and founders of start-ups. As per the rules of the contest, the participants will have to identify a problem that our city is currently facing and they will also have to work on a solution for the identified problem.

Participants are allowed to work on the solution as a team or individually. All this must be achieved in a time frame of 30 hours. This evening, Smart City Hackathon contest was declared open. Participating teams are racing against time and racking their brains to come out with feasible and implementable solutions for the city’s problems. Participating teams have been asked to focus on finding solutions in areas like hygiene, tourism, traffic, transport, parking, streets, health, farming, and living

At the inauguration of Smart City Hackathon, Dr. K. Vijayakarthikeyan turned nostalgic. He told the audience how the proposal was sent, and how the journey of Coimbatore being declared as a smart city began. “We must all work on finding a solution to the traffic problems and other road issues,” he said.

Seconding him was Dr. S. Rajasekaran, Director of Ganga Hospital, who said, “We must be able to achieve an innovative solution to improve road safety. Tamil Nadu is one of the states with the highest number of road accidents. An innovative road safety solution is the need of the hour.” For all those who are not aware of what SMART stands for, A. Amalraj’s explanation was an eye opener. “Specific Measurable Attainable Realistic Timely, is SMART. Through Smart City Hackathon, we must aim towards finding and implementing a Smart solution,” A. Amalraj said.

In his presentation Ashok Bakthavathsalam, Managing Director, KGiSL Ltd. gave the audience a glimpse of what Smart City Hackathon was all about. Over 200 teams with more than 600 participants are racing against time to find a workable solution to one of the problems that Coimbatore city is facing. The teams will be mentored by professionals from across India. The participating teams have just 30 hours to work on a solution.

The countdown for the Smart City Hackathon has begun. Tomorrow, around the same time, a jury will declare the winners. The winning team’s solution will also be implemented.

Smart City Hackathon is organised by Coimbatore Chapter of Young Indians (Yi) and Coimbatore City Municipal Corporation. KGiSL is the venue partner.