Past Challenges

Below is a small but representative selection of the Challenges and solutions that have emerged from CivTech since our launch in 2016. You can see full details of our last cohort on the dedicated CivTech 4.0 Demo Day website.

If you’d like to find out more about any of these challenges, companies or products—or indeed any that we haven’t featured here—please contact us.

In 2016 SEPA brought the following Challenge to the first CivTech, CivTech beta:

Scotland has effective flood warning systems in place for cities and many towns. Now we would like to reach more and smaller communities. So how can we develop an effective hyper-local system to warn people and give them the time to prepare?

Gary Martin, founder of RiverTrack, addressed this challenge. Gary has over twenty years’ experience as a successful software developer and is a prominent member of the Scottish IoT innovation community.

RiverTrack’s solution is a robust, low-maintenance river level monitoring and alarm system which incorporates low-power network connectivity, cost effective components and innovative design. Acoustic sensors measure river level changes and feed information to display units, which function independently of any communication infrastructure. It enables users to get almost real-time information regarding water levels in their area. Independent of any communication infrastructure [which can fail in adverse conditions] the displays acted as boosters to create a resilient mesh across wide areas, meaning no-one need be without early warning. The early warning system is designed to help preventing damages from floods and allows communities to be more resilient in case of emergency. Resilience is increased by allowing the users to act timely based on flood information and minimise potential damages to people and property.

There are currently 25 active sites and these cover 15 communities — some are RiverTrack supported communities, others are SEPA research sites, and some sites are for partner work. 

The solution RiverTrack produced in response to the challenge was the first in a planned range and has the potential to dramatically impact on flooding costs, which ran at over £5bn for the UK in 2015 (Source KPMG). The technology offers peace of mind to people in remote areas by allowing them to check water levels safely. There are also worldwide, insurance industry and data aggregation opportunities, as well as significant cost and operational relief for our amazing but hard-pressed emergency services.

RiverTrack said that “participation in the CivTech programme was significant in the development of a scalability strategy and expansion of their market potential.”

Through the CivTech programme RiverTrack has taken their flood alerting technologies through the contract manufacturing process, CE certification, and to market availability. Working with close partnerships developed during the programme, RiverTrack participated in the Horizon2020 ANYWHERE programme researching extreme weather and climate events for the A4Campiste project based in Catalonia. RiverTrack continues to support local communities and organisations across Scotland in their flood resilience efforts, and has UK and international projects in development

Their Highland Discovery solution is a multi-channel, geolocationally-aware ‘radio station’ app that plays through the in-car audio system and delivers content fine-tuned to the traveller’s interests, preferences, exact location and direction of travel. The channels are all synchronised to the landscape the car is travelling through, and are combined with a ‘bulletin’ function promoting curated tourist, cultural and other destinations within the A9’s drive-time.

Highland Discovery’s underlying technology means that ‘radio routes’ can be created quickly and efficiently for any road in the world — and indeed any other ‘line of travel’, be it rail, path, boat etc; and so the opportunity to license the technology is worldwide.

Data created by the journeys represents another significant opportunity, as do partnership agreements with tourism organisations of all types. These opportunities are being developed through an overriding brand, Whereverly.

In 2017 Historic Environment Scotland brought the following Challenge to CivTech 2.0:

Historic Environment Scotland (HES) is the lead public body established to investigate, care for and promote Scotland’s historic environment. The diversity of property type and profile is matched by the diverse geographical spread across the country, in many cases in extremely remote areas. The main goal of HES is to protect existing sites while enabling access to them to share their cultural value. Collecting meaningful data from the 251 un-ticketed sites is essential to understand and better prioritise investments in staffing, conservation and the visitor experience.

Replicade, an Asset Management Technology company with an international reputation, addressed this challenge, eventually forming an entirely new business—Wilderness Sensors.

Replicade delivered a low-cost, modular tool to track direction of travel of visitors and produce environmental data to support HES decision making. By understanding visitor flows, HES can focus its activities on sites which are in high demand and by measuring weather and other environmental data, additional information about potential risks concerning erosion can also be collected and actioned upon.

In 2018 Scottish National Heritage brought the following Challenge to CivTech 3.0:

Spending time in nature has enormous benefits for health and wellbeing, educational attainment and personal development. So, how can we use tech to enhance the experience of the outdoors in a way that will deliver its benefits to young people?

Glasgow-based Oxido, in collaboration with Scottish Natural Heritage and supported by CivTech developed Zepto, an outdoor learning, smart phone app with the aim to better connect people with nature. The first iPhone version was launched on 4th March at the annual CivTech Demo Day, by Ben Macpherson, Minister for Public Finance and Immigration. 

Mental health, inactivity, disaffection and loneliness are or are becoming major public health problems in Scotland and across the world. This problem is particularly acute in young people.

A powerful way of combatting these problems can be found in the natural world: people who experience the outdoors, even for relatively short times, benefit hugely — especially when that experience has context and meaning. This ‘natural health service’ has never been so important, in that it can significantly reduce the pressure on the NHS, education and social services.

Zepto encourages you to take your first steps in connecting with nature across Scotland, against a growing library of the most common species found in Scotland and offering activities to allow you to explore, share your local places and record your observations.

Stirling Council owns and operates a huge range of public facilities and capital assets. The scope and profile of these assets, how they are managed and who they are managed by, made them difficult to track as a single entity and therefore restricted visibility of the total cost to manage and maintain. Some of the newer buildings had BIM [building information management] systems but the vast majority did not, which meant that much of the information was uncoordinated and disjointed in inefficient systems.

The system has benefitted the council by saving management and factoring services and Homelync have attracted a number of new investors. The system is now installed their system in Scotland and further expansion is expected in 2021.

Scotland has an issue with the widespread sale of illicit products. These include everything from unregulated, counterfeit and dangerous products. The problems caused by illicit trade are numerous. Consumers are often unaware that they are buying these products, and the repercussions these transactions can have on themselves and their communities. Illicit products often fail to meet health and safety standards, with significant personal safety risks to the user. Much of revenue generated from illicit trade funds further criminal activity. 

Police Scotland, Trading Standards Scotland, HMRC and the Scottish Anti Illicit Trade Group have identified that they, as partners, would like to investigate solutions that can analyse data and identify and/or predict illicit trading at a local community level.  

The data capture tool and associated database and data models score the likelihood of a product/seller being fake, express relatable consumer ‘pain’ associated with it, and trigger appropriate messages to the end consumer so they can make informed choices.

Although developed specifically for this task, the technology has multiple applications and can be used in other areas to make predictions based on specific data. 

In 2019 Forestry and Land Scotland brought the following Challenge to CivTech 4.0:

How might we use technology to make better use of Scotland's valuable but limited supply of high quality tree seed?

5 separate teams (TreeTape, Forestart, Forest Research, Silvibio, and Elsoms Seeds) took on the challenge to fulfil its requirements and this is an example of one of the team’s innovation within the CivTech process.

Scotland was the first country in the world to declare a climate emergency, and planting more trees is vital if we are to tackle that emergency head on. This demand is well understood by the Scottish Government and is articulated in both the recently published Forestry Strategy for Scotland and the Climate Change action plan. However, the urgent need to do so much and so quickly in order to respond to this emergency means that existing processes and supplies of high quality tree seed are under significant strain. We need to find new ways of approaching the problem that ideally use less manual labour and that make more efficient use of the supplies of seed that we already have.  

Michael Ashby and his wife Angela, the founders of Cumbria Tree Growers, are wholesale producers of high quality bare rooted trees and hedge plants for farmers, landowners and forestry companies. Michael also has 30 years’ experience of tree nursery production working for himself and also as Nursery Manager at one of the UK’s largest tree nurseries.

Cumbria Tree Growers’ solution — TreeTape — is a true innovation in a traditional nursery production system for the key commercial coniferous forestry species grown in Great Britain. Inspired by new developments in vegetable production, the solution uses the most efficient means of production currently available to triple the typical yield of seedlings produced from a kilo of seed. It is a method of transplanting that has never been used before with trees, greatly reduces production time and provides further efficiencies throughout the whole production system, from seed sowing to the final saleable product. 

In 2019 West Dunbartonshire Council brought the following Challenge to CivTech 4.0:

Local Authorities have a multitude of assets in use ranging from ICT devices to wheelie bins. These each carry varying degrees and types of risk (financial, security, and reputational) if lost. Current manual audits and logging processes have proven insufficient and expensive in accounting for these assets, particularly those that are not connected to a network. How can we use technology to track off-network council assets at minimal cost?

M2M Cloud — an IoT solutions specialist with over 10 years’ experience in developing end-to-end connected sensor products — addressed this Challenge.

Based in Dundee, they have developed a range of award-winning asset tracking and security products and are considered leaders in this field. In 2019 M2M Cloud won the first public sector IoT contract for their new Neptune product, a connected risk management solution for monitoring water systems, with Highland and Islands Council.

M2M Cloud’s solution is Artemis, an innovative new asset tracking product that allows organisations to track and locate large numbers of physical assets without the deployment of complex infrastructure. Asset location and utilisation insights provide organisations with significant cost-saving benefits and operational efficiencies across public sector, healthcare and manufacturing sectors.

A lack of Property factoring of historic Tenements in Edinburgh leaves Tenement owners left to manage their own common repairs using the process outlined by the Tenements (Scotland) Act 2004. Local Authorities have no powers under this legislation to compel action and it can be difficult for the City of Edinburgh Council (CEC) as a landlord to carry out repairs to its homes in mixed tenure blocks without the agreement of other owners.

Novoville was founded in 2016 in response to the growing need for more participatory, accountable, transparent, efficient and inclusive local governance. It is a tech start-up with a unique mission to transform the public services we all use and improve tomorrow's government policies, making them citizen-centric. The company believes the collective intelligence that people have about the places they live in should be the starting point for any policy design.

Novoville created a web and mobile app that delivers solutions to intractable problems and guides users every step of the way from the identification of a necessary repair all the way to its completion, including payment for the works. It will lay out key steps of the process and allow users to take them on with minimum hassle.

Over 60 local authorities around Europe are currently using Novoville to improve the services they offer to citizens.