Urban Challenges
CityZone focuses on finding solutions for real challenges.
In Today's World, Cities Have A Much More Significant Impact On One's Day-To-Day Compared To Central Government. Cities Are Usually In Charge Of A Range Of Realms That Touch Different Aspects Of Our Lives.
Mobility, Education, Security, Safety, Infrastructure, Planning, Engagement, Communications, Culture, Welfare, Tourism, Local Businesses, Sports, Community, Accessibility, Privacy And Governance. This List Gives A Pretty Good Idea Regarding The Scope Of What Cities Deal With.
We are looking for individuals and startups, willing to rise to the challenges listed below:
We believe all women can embrace who they are,
can define their future, and can change the world.
Climate Action
With over 70% of global carbon emissions coming from cities, it is clear that we must find high-impact solutions to the effects of the climate crisis on our cities.
When seeking ways to cool our city down, we look to the changing urban fabric of the past two decades: with more buildings, vehicles and pedestrians, yet fewer trees, clean air and shade.
To face these changing times we must step up and come up with solutions beyond the conventional and the mundane.
We wish to focus on:
-
Measurement– for us to understand what we are up against, we are looking for better and more accurate ways of collecting relevant data at the micro climate level: surface temperatures, radiation, humidity, air velocity etc.
-
Energy– Solutions for active reduction of carbon footprint, with a specific focus on energy efficiency, access to renewable energy and energy storage vat all levels and scales.
-
Urban heat– Solutions for the reduction of heat generated by buildings, its measurement, and the assessment of solutions that integrate local urban nature, new building elements and materials, façade materials and heat distribution in crowded, dense urban streets.
Waste Reduction
In the City of Tel-Aviv Yafo approx. 1210 tons of waste is being produced per day, by its residents and many commuters (more than twice as much as the amount of residents).
After focusing a lot on in the recent years on different methods and strategies of waste management, we have managed to reduce the part of waste sent to landfill to 60.7% (compared to 83.3% in 2015).
We have reached this huge progress thanks to efforts in the fields of reusing, recycling, composting and mainly by investing in state of the art waste facilities at the end, such as the RDF plant in “hiriya” site, in the outskirts of the city. Still our main goal is to significantly increase the amount of waste diverted from landfill.
Our focus will be on 3 kinds of action to which we are looking for solutions:
-
Reduction– Behavioral change of residents and visitors, both in households and businesses around the city in order to reduce the generation of waste to begin with.
-
Reuse– Smart reuse solutions to reduce the amount of waste
-
Recycle– Efficient waste sorting, local waste treatment solution, at source and in the end.
Loneliness
Loneliness has its adverse effects on the elderly, resulting in functional decline, physically as well as mentally. With 35% of Israeli seniors reporting loneliness, this is clearly an epidemic requiring our attention.
We find interest in technologies and platforms that enable the creation of social interactions between the elderly and people around them, young and old, be it family or neighbours.
We should not forget that this is not just about seniors in need of help. It is also about retired professionals who can contribute back to the community with their knowledge, experience and time.
Ageing at Home
More and more seniors choose to live at home, over retirement homes, senior or assisted living. However, for the independent senior, beyond loneliness issues, this trend also poses some challenges from communicating with care givers in times of need and emergency, to access to municipal and other public services when leaving home becomes more difficult.
Cleanliness
Important urban areas attract people who come to live, work or enjoy life in the city. At such a scale, keeping our city clean and environmentally sustainable can sometimes become a challenge.
We are looking for startups that can help us in this task, and we are particularly interested in real-time, analytics-based, mobile solutions, to identify trimmed foliage, dog droppings or overflowing trash bins; to automatically find the street furniture, loose sidewalk tile or crack in the bicycle lane that need fixing.
Environmentally Friendly Transportation
Tel Aviv has already laid out certain policies, aimed at promoting a more sustainable and environmentally friendly commute, that would leave no carbon footprint.
We are looking for startups that would help us in this effort, promoting walking, bicycles and electric scooters throughout the city, in a safe and efficient manner.
Other aspects of this challenge revolve around EV charging and Energy Sharing, for both light personal vehicles, as well as cars and busses.
Public Safety
Cities cannot be smart if they are not safe and secure for their residents and visitors.
We are looking for startups that will help us keep our city safe, in real time, by identifying any disturbance to the public order – street fights, vandalism, burglaries, crowding, noise, etc. – so that our security agencies can react as quickly as possible to any incident.
We need to be safe on our day-to-day on the streets, as well as in special, mass events that take place across the city, and require some specific solutions for such complex scenes with multitudes of visitors.
Cybersecurity
Running a smart city, and providing better services to residents, often require the deployment of remote-sensing IoT devices and management platforms. Such devices potentially attract ill-intended people, looking for opportunities to interrupt city services, by attacking devices, networks and other assets.
We are looking for startups focusing on the protection of IoT devices and communication networks against cyber threats of all kinds.
Privacy
It is a common belief that smart cities threaten our privacy, given the deployment of sensors and cameras, and the fusion of data sets in order to provide better and smarter services to the citizens.
We take citizens’ privacy seriously, and we are looking for startups with an innovative approach to privacy and anonymization of data.
Important urban areas attract people who come to live, work or enjoy life in the city. At such a scale, keeping our city clean and environmentally sustainable can sometimes become a challenge.
We are looking for startups that can help us in this task, and we are particularly interested in real-time, analytics-based, mobile solutions, to identify trimmed foliage, dog droppings or overflowing trash bins; to automatically find the street furniture, loose sidewalk tile or crack in the bicycle lane that need fixing.
Cities cannot be smart if they are not safe and secure for their residents and visitors.
Autonomous Mobility
Being the largest metropolitan area in the country, the number of people commuting around the city is more than three times its population. This poses a massive challenge in providing high-quality services based on existing infrastructure.
We are looking for startups that focus on promoting autonomous transportation, specifically in the following aspects:
-
Urban environment and infrastructure for autonomous driving through mapping, sensors, V2X communications, etc.
-
Autonomous mass transportation solutions.
