Category: News

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Exciting progress on SmartSIP+ in Bangladesh

People were literally queuing out of the door (see photo above) to see the new technology at three of our SmartSIP+ demo sites which officially opened across Bangladesh last week!

What a whirlwind it was – workshops with Bangladesh and UK government representatives, UN organisations and NGOs, mixed in with site visits and further workshops with farmers and their families.

The challenge

The Bangladesh government wants to replace the 1.2m diesel irrigation pumps that cause around 5% of the country’s pollution. Fuel is a significant cost to the farmers, and around 100 million people in Bangladesh rely on farming for their income. Solar power is clean sustainable energy, and Bangladesh has an abundance of sunlight, whereas it imports all its fule. However, solar powered systems need way more capital outlay than the vast majority of farmers can manage, so government subsidy is necessary. But is it a wise investment?

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Cliff stabilisation / landslips

This week the BBC has been filming the cliff stabilisation project we’re involved with. HASTE is a community group in St Leonards on Sea, who have come together to solve a shared problem, and create a template for many other affected areas in the UK to follow.

The British Geological Survey (BGS) has a database of over 17,000 landslides, and estimates 350,000 properties in the UK are at significant risk of land slides. The cliff we’re concerned with affects around £200m worth of property, and the total amount of property at risk across the UK exceeds £100Bn.

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Introducing VizAI: auto-magic dashboard creation

For local government customers using Thingitude’s hosted ThingsBoard platform, we’ve got some exciting news about how you can instantly create a dashboard for your data.

You already know the power of LoRaWAN dashboards for gaining insights into your council services – whether monitoring road temperature, litter bins, or managing assets. We also know that while Thingsboard is powerful and flexible, the initial setup for new use cases, like getting data from The Things Network and configuring devices, is a bit of a hurdle, often requiring our team’s expertise.

Our amazing developer Stan has been hard at work creating something truly helpful for you: VizAI.

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Measuring the impact of flood management schemes

It’s the height of summer in the UK and the country is in the middle of a heatwave, so naturally our thoughts turn to… floods!

Last week we were in North London in a park where the council has been working hard on a natural flood management scheme. They are holding back water in the flood plain area by diverting it through wetland areas and (intentionally) leaky dams – slowing its journey and hopefully preventing or reducing the risk of flood to nearby properties.

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Innovative smart tech on three wheels

The Bangladesh traffic system is the strongest evidence I’ve seen of an unseen benevolent deity looking after everyone on the road.

As a man drenched in British reservation throughout my upbringing, the idea of using the horn on a car makes me physically recoil: oh, the horror of causing a scene! Not so in Bangladesh where the horn is happily tooted at every possible opportunity. I’m behind you – toot! I’m beside you – toot!, I’m overtaking you, while you are overtaking a rickshaw that is overtaking another rickshaw – toot toot! – and oh look we’re doing this while careering towards us is a coach overtaking a lorry overtaking a …whatever that is – toot toot!

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