Welcome to GeoVation - Innovation Challenges from Ordnance Survey.
GeoVation Challenges address specific community needs, which may be satisfied, in part, through the use of geography. Entrepreneurs, developers, community groups, innovators can enter our GeoVation Challenges for a chance to win innovation funding to help develop their ideas. You can read our blog posts below and find out find out more about us, our challenges and how to enter.
Since we announced the GeoVation finalists who have been invited to GeoVation Camp, many of you have been are asking for more information on camp and what you can do to prepare.
GeoVation Camp runs from Friday evening until Sunday evening and it is where the hard work and fun really begins. It is important that you bring a team with you as there will be lots to work through. The camp is based around framework that Innovation = Problem x Solution x Execution and we’ve made a great video which explains more about this. It shows you what will happen at camp and you can hear about other people’s experience.
During the weekend you will have the opportunity to think about questions such as what problem are you trying to solve? What would happen if you did nothing? What is the value of your solution? How do you demonstrate success?
The weekend is a fun and collaborative process and their will be service designers, GeoVation team members and other people there to help you answer these questions and build your pitches for funding.
Find our more by watching the video. Information about camp starts about 2 minutes in.
Wales Coast Path GeoVation Challenge winners, Helen and Nicola Steer, have just launched their new iPhone app, Real Food Wales, which will help visitors to the area discover local, sustainable and delicious food.
Last year’s GeoVation Challenge called for innovative ideas using geography and technology which would help connect communities and visitors along the Wales Coast Path, benefiting those who live and work along the route, and beyond and Real Food Wales was one of the 5 ideas we funded. They were awarded a £30,000 of innovation funding to develop their idea. They are part of Mapkin: a team of five people who have worked together to develop this app.
Real Food Wales is an easy to use app, which maps over 150 of the best food businesses in Pembrokeshire, helping users access sustainable and delicious food.
Helen from Real Food Wales, said: “Real Food Wales is an ideal app for anyone looking for a special meal at a restaurant, a bite to eat in a quirky café, the best sausage in town for your campfire or a food experience you’ll never forget. The app utilises our unique network of local knowledge by displaying a large selection of food businesses on an offline interactive map of Pembrokeshire. The map really highlights what an exceptional range of local food businesses are operating in this area.”
The core feature of Real Food Wales is the interactive map, consisting of five zoom levels, which allow users to find the best places to eat out, buy food or have a foodie experience. A unique feature of the app is that it stores an offline map of Pembrokeshire onto the device, meaning that users can still access all of the information even when there is no mobile signal.
Our GeoVation judging panel met this week and were delighted at the quality and scope of the ideas submitted to our GeoVation Challenge to look for ways that British business could improve their environmental performance using Ordnance Survey products or services in the solution.
The judging panel have now selected a short-list of 10 finalists who have been invited to develop their ideas further at GeoVation Camp, held over the weekend of 21 -23 June 2013 at Ordnance Survey in Southampton.
The finalists who have been invited to GeoVation Camp are:
“Virtual” national transport fleet. An idea to create a connect-able, broker-free web of independent transport companies; breaking down the systemic big company / small company inefficiencies which exist.
Creating an Energy Democracy: The Wasted Energy Network – This was the top voted idea on the GeoVation Challenge. The idea a platform for encouraging inter-business recycling, triggering waste based economies and identifying areas of opportunity for sustainable waste management and energy generation systems.
RecycleLink The idea is to bring waste producers and processors together using a centralised trading platform that will facilitate collaboration and therefore reduce the amount of waste sent to landfill.
You entered 47 great ideas in our GeoVation Challenge to help business improve environmental performance and I thought it would be interesting to see where these are on the OS OpenSpace map below. Follow the links within the markers to find out more about each idea and, while voting is over, you can still add your comments and questions to the ideas.
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To see this map cookies and javascript must be enabled. If you are still having trouble after having checked both of these please contact us using the link at the top of the page
The Judging Panel will be meeting next week to select the best ideas to save the environment which will be invited to GeoVation Camp on 21-23 June and we’ll announce these at the end of next week. If you’ve entered an idea to the challenge and registered using social media, then please log in and enter your email details so we can contact you if your idea is selected to come to camp
Our latest GeoVation Challenge has just closed and soon we’ll be announcing who the finalists that will be invited to GeoVation Camp on 21 – 23 June.
We’ll be selecting the best ideas that address the problems identified and use Ordnance Survey data, including OS OpenData and OS OpenSpace, together with other open data in the solution.
Some of the ideas could make use of Linked Data. The term Linked Data is used to describe a method of exposing, sharing, and connecting data and information using uniform resource identifiers (URIs) on the Web. Across government over the last ten years there has been a growing realisation to the power of linked data for exposing, sharing, and connecting pieces of data).
Ordnance Survey will soon be launching the next iteration of the Linked Data Service. In preparation a new beta version (http://beta.data.ordnancesurvey.co.uk) of the service has been designed for you to have a play around, test and review against your current applications.
Ordnance Survey launched Linked Data in April 2010 and has seen a continued growth of the use in government and research. This understanding of the use of Linked Data has been used to develop an improved service which is easy to use and access adhering to new standards making the data more open.
So, with judging now underway in our current challenge, Chris describes yesterday’s All Wales Coast Path first anniversary event in West Wales and progress of our previous challenge winner.
GeoVation challenge partner, Ramblers Cymru hosted a fantastic event in Kidwelly, yesterday to celebrate the first anniversary of the opening of the Wales Coast Path and to launch the Big Welsh Walk, which takes place around the path this bank holiday weekend. The Wales Coast Path was, of course, the subject of our previous GeoVation challenge: “How can we connect communities and visitors along the Wales Coast Path?” which was timed to coincide with the official opening of the path on 5 May 2012.
Throughout the day, class after class of local school children (and adults) explored Wales and its coastline with Gwenda Owen, Ramblers Community Engagement Officer, on the enormous map produced by Ordnance Survey for Ramblers Cymru, and visited stands exhibiting activities on or near the path including local beekeeping, and allotment growing groups. In the afternoon MissionExplore (previous GeoVation winners) worked with several classes to produce mini mission explore booklets with children choosing their missions.
Local school children exploring Wales with Gwenda Owen, Ramblers Community Engagement Officer
The next stage is for the judges to start reading your ideas and select which of these offer the best solution to the environment challenge theme and are innovative, use technology and of course, use Ordnance Survey geographical information in the solution. The judges will be meeting in a couple of weeks and we’ll announce the finalists to be invited to GeoVation Camp in Southampton over the weekend of 21-23 June.
Meanwhile, find out who the judging panel are below.
The Judging Panel Chair is:
Roland Harwood who is co-founder of 100%Open, the open innovation agency that works with the likes of LEGO, Orange and Oxfam to co-innovate with their partners. Roland was formerly Director of Open Innovation at NESTA, the UK’s National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts. Graduating with a PhD in Physics from Edinburgh University, he has held senior innovation roles in the Utilities and Media industries and in addition has worked with 100’s of start-ups to raise venture capital and commercialise technology. In addition he has worked as a TV and film music producer for SonyBMG
With only a few hours left to enter the GeoVation Challenge to help business save the environment, I thought it would be good to see where, in the UK, the ideas that have been submitted are from. Take a look at our OS OpenSpace map below and you can use the links within the markers to find out more about the ideas and comment and vote on them.
To see this map cookies and javascript must be enabled. If you are still having trouble after having checked both of these please contact us using the link at the top of the page
If you’ve got an idea to help British business be greener then it’s not too late to enter your own ideas too . You have until 12 noon today (1 May) to enter the GeoVation Challenge. We are looking for ideas that use Ordnance Survey data, including OS OpenData and OS OpenSpace, together with other open data. The best ideas will be invited to a weekend GeoVation Camp from 21 – 23 June 2013 where you can work on building your idea into a prototype and pitch to the judging panel. Successful ideas receive a share of £100,000 funding to get started on developing their ideas.
In a previous blog, we shared news about how we were supporting the BlueLightCamp hackathon, which was a developer event that took place in Manchester last Sunday. Aimed at developers that work in the Fire, Police and resilience services in the public and private sector, the event provided an opportunity for participants to explore and develop prototype ideas that address just some of the criminal and justice issues we face today.
The day kicked off at 10 am, with the event organisers providing a recap of some of the key topics that had been discussed in Saturday’s unconference. One recurring theme related to the increasing role that social media is playing in the provision of such services and the potential that these channels of communication may hold for the future. Many examples were cited of how police forces are increasingly using platforms such as Twitter and Facebook to communicate with the public. It was highlighted that some forces are even adopting other platforms such as Google+, Pinterest, YouTube and Flickr to not only to broadcast information, but to engage with people directly and to open lines of communication that were previously not in place.
You have just a few days left to enter our current GeoVation Challenge to help British business improve environmental performance – with a chance to win a share of our £100,000 innovation funding pot. The following guest post from David Simoes-Brown of open innovation agency 100%Open, shows how they help organisations create value by innovating with others. This could help get you thinking of ideas to create value from waste.
Here’s an example of how a small British business helped a global corporation improve its environmental performance using a partnership approach. 100%Open helped Interface, the world’s leading designer and manufacturer of carpet tiles to team up with the Zoological Society of London to develop an innovative approach to tackling the problem of discarded fishing nets in developing countries.
This partnership is known as Net-Works and aims to work with local experts and coastal communities in the Philippines and beyond to develop a community-based supply chain for discarded nylon fishing nets. These are recycled into carpet tiles having been collected, cleaned, tested, baled and shipped to Europe. This will improve the coastal marine ecosystem, create livelihood opportunities for those communities and demonstrate that cross-sector collaboration can create a sustainable business model with commercial, environmental and social benefit.
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Roland Harwood who is co-founder of 
