Abley success in hackathon #HackForBetterDays

Abley’s Web & Software Development team entry “Solitude” was recently awarded first place in Oceania for the HERE Technologies’ virtual hackathon #HackForBetterDays.

Held throughout May 2020 across the Asia-Pacific region, 50 teams took part in the competition, with 800 participants across 20 different countries.

The challenge required teams to use location and other disruptive technologies to build innovative solutions to respond to the current & future needs of society following the impact of COVID-19.

Through rapid prototyping, our agile team developed an app called “Solitude”. It was created using the HERE platform and live data from Uber Media, augmented with Abley’s unique combination of transportation and geospatial expertise.

With social distancing an effective measure to reduce the spread of COVID -19, we wanted to find locations and services in the community where other people weren’t – places of solitude, free from crowds and queues. 

By using mobile location data to identify quiet and busy areas, Solitude enables users to easily find out how busy their favourite places are before they leave the house, or even find alternative quieter venues that they didn’t know about before.

Solitude allows users to search for different types of destinations and gives each one a rating of how busy it is in real time. The user can identify busy locations at a glance, find out more information about potential destinations and quickly figure out the best way to travel there.