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€200,000 Boost For Digital Innovation In The Midlands

Thursday, 19 August 2021 10:26

The fund is aimed at using new technologies to solve rural problems.

Almost €200,000 is going towards improving digital innovation in the midlands.

The government's 'Our Rural Future Digital Innovation Programme' is funding projects that use new technologies to solve rural problems.

Over €52,500 is being allocated in Westmeath, to create digital database that will map and keep track of all funding distributed to community groups by the government and statutory bodies.

Just over €14,000 is being invested in flood management and the monitoring of water quality in Edenderry, as part of the Smart Town Technology project.

While €35,000 will be used by the e-denderry initiative to create a digital reporting tool and public web portal to monitor the effectiveness of public funding within the county.

 

See more about the three projects below:

WESTMEATH

Project: Asset Mapping

Stream: Innovation

Funding awarded: €52,600

Over the last four years there has been unprecedented levels of funding made available for towns and villages and community groups. The majority or this funding is administered through the local authority and the Local Community Development Committees (LCDCs) structures. Over the last four years, taking LEADER and Rural Supports schemes only, there has been well in excess of €8m funding spread across the county. There has also been substantial funding secured under the Urban and Rural Regeneration Programmes, Healthy Ireland, etc.

This project proposes to:

Geocode all assets that have been funded and create an overall “digital funding system” that records the details of all items funded, the funding source, groups that received the funding, photos of the items funded etc.
The mapping tool would create layers of data that could be looked at individually (i.e., funding by source/geographical area) or collectively show all the publicly funded assets in the county. There is also potential to add various other layers of data to the system.

Provide BI dashboards for use by decision makers in the council.

Create a database, utilised by the above, to store information on all funded projects.

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OFFALY

Project: Water Flow/Level Recording

Stream: Innovation

Funding Awarded: €14,268

‘e-denderry’ is an IoT – Internet of Things | LoRaWAN Connectivity | Smart Town Technology project between Offaly County Council and Cellnex . It has been successful in translating opportunities of IoT for rural town management into tangible and practical case studies demonstrating benefits, costs savings and opportunities for service improvements using embedded device connection functionality in relevant IoT sensor sets.

Learnings from e-denderry will be used to build a Programme Logic Controller and integrate this into a custom Printed Circuit Board with input connectivity from a range of IoT sensors to measure parameters where possible in the two topics below, There will be output transmission to the LoRa network to remit the information to a collection and collation format (either OPW who already collate some level information by a remote unit but utilising GPS/GPRS for transmission), or SmartBrain) probably via an Application Programming Interface. In this case the identified opportunity is to work with Meath County Council, the Local Authorities Water Programmes Office, the OPW and the EPA with a view to use of the services for the project title in two areas in watercourse management relating to:

*Flow / levels (flood management) and water quality for environmental safety.

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Project:Edenderry IOT

Stream: Innovation

Funding Awarded: €35,021

The ‘e-denderry’ project has had support from some public agencies and has been well received by other public agencies since launch. There have been several opportunities identified as to how this project might move forward, with funding to commission a feasibility report to analyse outputs to date; see what outcomes can be extracted from those; and look in depth at the wide range of opportunities that are available.
Combine datasets to be used as a reporting tool which can be used to monitor the effectiveness of public funding within the County.

Provide a public web portal to improve communications on funded grants to the public and also promote and acknowledge central government / EU funding programmes.

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