Smart Technologies

Good World Solutions’s mobile technology allows companies — and consumers — to know what life is like for the thousands of factory workers behind the scenes.

When a crisis occurs, the people who are affected can use Ushahidi's open-source platform to report what is happening around them via social media, email, and text. Their reports are compiled into real-time maps, which enable others to reach and help them more quickly.

The industrial ecosystem increasingly is turning to the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) in pursuit of quality control, efficiency and supply-chain improvements. But as sensors get cheaper, Big Data grabs a bigger footprint, and the technology gets ever more ubiquitous, complexities emerge with the broadening scale. With all this ability to measure and monitor, businesses risk drowning in a sea of data during the digital transformation. This challenge demands a strategy for structuring information, applying analytics and extracting knowledge to harness data’s value.

21st Century Fox’s National Geographic and Sprint have announced neurological physical therapist Asha Gummadi as the winner of the “CHASING GENIUS: Unlimited Innovation” challenge. Asha, who is based in Philadelphia, will receive $25,000 to pursue her vision of helping doctors to provide virtual physical therapy in developing countries. This is National Geographic’s second CHASING GENIUS digital initiative, which aims to bring together a community of active, aspirational, socially conscious consumers who want to make a positive difference in the world.

Arrow Electronics has teamed with Silicon Valley non-profit New Story to help complete the first low-cost, 3D printed house for humanitarian purposes. The nonprofit, which focuses on providing safe homes for people living in inadequate housing around the world, plans to print a small concrete test home later this year in rural El Salvador.

What will mass transit look like in the future? Earlier this year, California announced an ambitious plan to reduce emissions by 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030, setting the state on a path to achieving 80-percent reduction by 2050. Although satisfying these goals will require contributions from all sectors of the economy, the transition to zero- and near-zero emission vehicles will play an outsized role — particularly when it comes to mass transit.

The City of Lakewood, California, hired Tetra Tech to design a new stormwater capture project that will improve water quality in the Los Cerritos Channel by removing pollutants conveyed within stormwater. The project consists of an air-inflated rubber dam diversion system to re-direct all runoff from the channel through a pre-treatment system to remove trash, debris, and sediment.

Over the past few years, the topic of refugees has dominated the news. Despite the widespread conversation, the realities of wars in faraway places are still hard to grasp for most people. To help them better realize the effects of conflict, a few companies have recreated scenarios to give consumers a glimpse into how war affects people’s every day. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) just launched a new campaign to create an experience using today’s latest technology, allowing everyone, everywhere to immerse themselves in what is happening thousands of miles away.

Financial services are core to poverty reduction and economic empowerment, yet a staggering 42% of women and girls worldwide – approximately 1.1 billion – remain outside the formal financial system. Women’s financial inclusion is essential to achieving gender equality by enabling them to handle their finances with greater privacy, security and efficiency, and providing a platform for future investments.