On 15 October, ERTICO – ITS Europe, the Finnish Ministry of Transport, ITS Finland and HERE launched the contest for the best “ITS in your pocket” app for smartphones during the European Pavilion reception at the ITS World Congress in Tokyo.
In launching the App contest at the European Pavilion, Minna Kivimäki, Director General of the Transport Ministry of Finland said: “I’m honoured to declare the “ITS in your pocket” App competition officially open. We look forward to being blown away by fresh ideas! The competition winners will be rewarded with great prizes and great visibility but on top of this, all participants will get the chance to get an interactive community support and participate in workshops. We really hope this contest will let the ITS apps sector grow.”
The App Contest 2014 is open to European companies, teams, and individual developers who want to learn about intelligent transport systems and develop their ideas and proposals with the guidance of the best experts in the field. Over the next few months, workshops and webinars will be organised in various European cities to support participants in their proposals. Companies and developers will have time from now until April next year to submit their proposals; shortlisted participants will be notified in May.
The winners of the competition will be awarded at the ITS European Congress in Helsinki next June and granted prizes in Euros for their best three mobile applications in the following categories:
- Multimodality – applications to boost the use of multimodal transport
- Sustainability – applications for sustainable urban mobility
- Innovation – “out of the box” innovations for better mobility
In addition, to the above mentioned three categories, 2 special prizes will be awarded, one by HERE and AppCampus for the best ITS enabled application on Lumia Smartphone, and another one for the best application to help mobility in the city of Helsinki.
Sami Sahala, ITS Chief Advisor at City of Helsinki said: “City of Helsinki is happy to sponsor and support the “ITS in your pocket” competition together with our partner cities. We already have good track record in releasing open data and providing APIs for journey planning. With the simply outstanding results from those we firmly believe that cities need to even more focus even more their effort in enabling third party solution development, and for us this competition is one major step in that direction.”
On the same day, the Call for Papers for the 10th ITS European Congress was also officially opened. In addition to the two categories Technical and Scientific Papers, the 2014 Call is open for the first time to “Commercial papers” presenting products or ideas close to the market use. This new category includes pre-market proposals which are linked to the development of a specific product or service and therefore has a high commercial value.
Didier Gorteman, Director of Congresses at ERTICO, said: “we are very pleased to have this new type of paper in our programme. These new works will be presented in a “commercial theatre” where individuals will have the chance to present their proposals in front of an audience of experts and leading companies in the ITS sector. This is a new approach to emphasise the commercial and sales aspect of the congress through these papers”.
The ITS European Congress 2014 takes place in Helsinki, Finland from 16 to 19 June with the theme “ITS in your pocket – Proven solutions driving user services”. It is organised by ERTICO – ITS Europe and the European Commission and hosted by ITS Finland, the Ministry of Transport and Communications, and the City of Helsinki.
