We are creating some awesome events for you. Kindly bear with us.

Water safety system to prevent drowning caused by rip currents

Photo Credit: The James Dyson Award

Students from the School of Design at New Zealand’s Victoria University Wellington have been named runners-up in the prestigious 2019 New Zealand James Dyson Award for a water safety system designed to prevent drownings due to rip currents.

According to a recent press release, the Nah Yeah Buoy can detect a rip and change colour, depending on the danger posed by the rip. 3D printing and Arduino technology were used to develop the buoy.

The water safety system

It is an adaptive system for water safety designed to identify rip currents near beaches, visualise their locations and movements, and provide interactive alerts and warnings for lifeguards and water users.

All the entries for the Awards must solve a problem. The students looked into issues that New Zealand faced and learned that people who come for a holiday may not be aware of rips.

Rips, apparently, were the third highest cause of accidental death. In addition, 80% of all lifeguard rescues are related to rips.

The Nah Yeah Buoy app allows lifeguards to change the buoys for emergencies, such as a shark sighting, in order to allow a quick response from beach-goers.

A number of the LED light-bearing buoys are placed in a grid system in the water and work by radio frequency, collecting water flow data and relaying it back to an app used by lifeguards.

The colours are inspired by traffic lights: green means go; orange means caution; red means avoid the area. The grid-like system and the lights teach the people what the water currents look like.

A sign that explains the system provides a combination of education with prevention of drowning.

Background of the project

For every problem, there are many solutions. Six concepts were produced before narrowing down the design to a buoy.

Buoys are always seen in the water and will therefore not distract people from the beauty of the beach.

Once their design was final, the form of the buoy came together in two weeks, and they started 3D printing as soon as it was confirmed.

The electronics was created at the same time and then testing began after. Several sensors were tested to reduce the number of choices and find the right one.

The pair ultimately went with a water flow sensor because of its being waterproof. The other two choices, the flex sensor and the pressure sensor, were not.

The students will be representing New Zealand at the international James Dyson Award along with three others from New Zealand as well as finalists from 27 other countries.

They do not have funding yet to carry on their research. However, winning the worldwide competition may just be the answer.

Runners-up will be receiving $9,000. The winner of the entire competition, meanwhile, will receive $55,000, plus $9,000 for their university.

Both students are in their final year of study and would like to develop the buoy further, given time and resource.

PARTNER

Qlik’s vision is a data-literate world, where everyone can use data and analytics to improve decision-making and solve their most challenging problems. A private company, Qlik offers real-time data integration and analytics solutions, powered by Qlik Cloud, to close the gaps between data, insights and action. By transforming data into Active Intelligence, businesses can drive better decisions, improve revenue and profitability, and optimize customer relationships. Qlik serves more than 38,000 active customers in over 100 countries.

PARTNER

CTC Global Singapore, a premier end-to-end IT solutions provider, is a fully owned subsidiary of ITOCHU Techno-Solutions Corporation (CTC) and ITOCHU Corporation.

Since 1972, CTC has established itself as one of the country’s top IT solutions providers. With 50 years of experience, headed by an experienced management team and staffed by over 200 qualified IT professionals, we support organizations with integrated IT solutions expertise in Autonomous IT, Cyber Security, Digital Transformation, Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure, Workplace Modernization and Professional Services.

Well-known for our strengths in system integration and consultation, CTC Global proves to be the preferred IT outsourcing destination for organizations all over Singapore today.

PARTNER

Planview has one mission: to build the future of connected work. Our solutions enable organizations to connect the business from ideas to impact, empowering companies to accelerate the achievement of what matters most. Planview’s full spectrum of Portfolio Management and Work Management solutions creates an organizational focus on the strategic outcomes that matter and empowers teams to deliver their best work, no matter how they work. The comprehensive Planview platform and enterprise success model enables customers to deliver innovative, competitive products, services, and customer experiences. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, with locations around the world, Planview has more than 1,300 employees supporting 4,500 customers and 2.6 million users worldwide. For more information, visit www.planview.com.

SUPPORTING ORGANISATION

SIRIM is a premier industrial research and technology organisation in Malaysia, wholly-owned by the Minister​ of Finance Incorporated. With over forty years of experience and expertise, SIRIM is mandated as the machinery for research and technology development, and the national champion of quality. SIRIM has always played a major role in the development of the country’s private sector. By tapping into our expertise and knowledge base, we focus on developing new technologies and improvements in the manufacturing, technology and services sectors. We nurture Small Medium Enterprises (SME) growth with solutions for technology penetration and upgrading, making it an ideal technology partner for SMEs.

PARTNER

HashiCorp provides infrastructure automation software for multi-cloud environments, enabling enterprises to unlock a common cloud operating model to provision, secure, connect, and run any application on any infrastructure. HashiCorp tools allow organizations to deliver applications faster by helping enterprises transition from manual processes and ITIL practices to self-service automation and DevOps practices. 

PARTNER

IBM is a leading global hybrid cloud and AI, and business services provider. We help clients in more than 175 countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline business processes, reduce costs and gain the competitive edge in their industries. Nearly 3,000 government and corporate entities in critical infrastructure areas such as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM’s hybrid cloud platform and Red Hat OpenShift to affect their digital transformations quickly, efficiently and securely. IBM’s breakthrough innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific cloud solutions and business services deliver open and flexible options to our clients. All of this is backed by IBM’s legendary commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity and service.

Send this to a friend