Public-Safety Mobile App Hackathon Announces Winners

Focusing on the power of technology to create mobile solutions that could benefit the first-responder community, the AT&T Public Safety Mobile Hackathon challenged professional and novice application developers alike to create public-safety apps that would help meet the unique needs of our first responders. During the 28-hour competition, more than 70 participants created 11 mobile apps that offered real solutions to challenges faced by first responders.

Presented with three challenges to hack toward, participants developed apps to assist public-safety officials with team communications, situational awareness and location tracking. The winning apps included:

• 1st Place: InstantAct — Provides public-safety officials in the field with a more modern way of communicating via voice as well as providing location awareness to colleagues.

• 2nd Place: Trakr — Enables both citizens and police officers to upload data regarding small crimes. The location of this information would then be analyzed with a heat map, enabling police departments to best use their resources.

• 3rd Place: CERTify — Allows Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) coordinators to manage the day-to-day activities of its CERT managers, helping to track their training and credentialing.

Members from the first-responder community were on-site to mentor participants, and additional guidance and support was provided by industry leaders, such as the Department of Commerce Public Safety Communications Research Program (PSCR), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of Emergency Communications (OEC), Association of Public Safety Communications Officials (APCO), Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent and more.

Security companies, such as app risk management company Appthority, Veracode and Lookout, were also on-site to help participants develop apps that achieve the security levels needed by public-safety officials