MapGage - enabling smart city employees

Helping and teaching Smart City field operators carry out inspections and maintenance of complex IoT Smart City assets.

The development of Smart Cities calls for new skills. We believe this does not mean new people have to be brought in to replace existing city staff. City staff can acquire the needed knowledge through upskilling.

We have a platform and mobile application that manage map-based field operations.

Our customers have large geographical areas to manage, they are cities, ports, and construction sites. As field operators are sent out to perform tasks, we have helped them improve efficiency and save time by sending them to the right location with the right work process and appropriate datasheets. Our solution is adopted by our customers as it helps them with digitizing and standardizing work, increasing work quality and efficiency, and avoiding wasted time by arriving on location without the process for performing a given task.

Smart Cities become smarter through implementation of connected Internet of Things (IoT). These improve safety, livability, movement and usability of cities to the benefit of their citizens. The forecasted volume of connected IoTs within Smart Cities is in billions of units. Their handling, inspection and maintenance by cities will become as important as road works, park maintenance, and other key activities pertaining to cities.

As Smart Cities integrate new technologies, their staff unfortunately do not have the competences needed to cope with the changes in their job expectations. City field operators who often have little education will rapidly be made redundant as they do not have the knowledge to handle the new technologies.

We believe that digitization of work, access to procedures and information through mobile phones will become an assistive tool to establishing continuous upskilling of field operators.  We intend to showcase city staff upskilling so that they can handle smart city IoT devices. We will provide them with the adequate information and clear processes that will enable them to inspect and maintain the increasing amount of IoT devices spread across smart cities.

Each task will provide city field operators with text, visuals and step-by-step procedures to identify the IoT device, inspect it and perform the appropriate maintenance when needed.

The application of upskilling that we want to demonstrate with smart cities can be extended to all industries with field workers. A few examples (road, highway and railroads. Electric and water networks).

As we demonstrate results through Smart Cities, we expect to extend upskilling to industries.

The world is changing at a pace that is too fast for education to follow. For those people who have had little education, the digital evolution of their environment and work means that they are being left behind.

This can be avoided through continuous upskilling. On location information provided through mobile applications is a solution for providing continuous upskilling.

Our solution helps field workers perform new tasks and consequently keep their jobs.  

There is a drastic increase of IoT devices being setup within Smart Cities. The challenge for city field operators is to understand and work with these technologies. 

We make sure that they are not left behind (lack of education), but continue to be active actors and keep up to level with the new technical work expected from them.  

With our solution, city field operators are provided with clear datasheets, processes and information to guide them to perform the installations, inspections and maintenance requirements of Smart City IoT devices, while at the same time acquiring new knowledge.

Our web based cloud platform associates multiple layers over maps (CAD drawings, IoT data content, map position, etc) for team managers to have connection to and visibility of the various IoT devices that are implemented within Smart Cities. Automatic, planned and manual tasks are generated and sent to field operators for action.

City field operators receive their tasks via our mobile application. Each task is associated with the needed data and processes specific to each type IoT device as well as a step by step process so that they can carry out the work expected from them.

We have implemented a pilot at the city of Rotterdam (Netherlands) where adoption is high among city employees (field operators). This pilot has helped us adapt our product to better fit the user needs. Our goal is to implement more pilots so that we can fully demonstrate adoption.

With an increased number of pilots, we’ll also be able to optimize the content and format of the information and processes provided to city employees so that they smoothly acquire new knowledge and proceed through the learning curve of new technologies in the most efficient way.

Our ability to reach the greatest number of Smart City employees is dependent on our providing the best learning experience to city employees and developing our software to be scalable. We hope to benefit from the MIT partnership to provide optimal learning experience. Scalability relies on cities being able to easily implement and configure our software. 

Our platform can also be used for other industries where technology is at risk of removing unskilled employees. We will be looking at licensing our platform to partners who can provide upskilling within other industries.

Our selling argument (with cost saving demonstration) for Smart Cities relates to being able to efficiently and rapidly handle IoT installation, inspection and maintenance. 

Our selling argument to city field operators is their ability to save time on administrative work while gaining (upskill) knowledge  through a user-friendly app.  

Our SaaS is priced to Smart Cities on number of IoT devices connected, not on number of users. As we've seen through our pilot in Rotterdam, this helps obtain user adoption. We closely monitor (and adapt when needed) user benefit to maximise usage and retention. 

We have 150 registered users, 60 of those being active. These registrations come from 3 construction inspection and maintenance contracts and 1 Smart City pilot.

The construction inspection led us to understanding the important knowledge gap that was developing in Smart Cities. 

The construction inspection has clearly adopted our solution due to its help with digitizing documentation and reports. More importantly, Smart City users obtain added value by receiving the necessary information, through the mobile app, to perform their tasks on city IoTs. We know that we need to improve and adapt the information that we provide them.

Our primary population are city field operators. During the next 12 months, as we concentrate on optimising upskilling features and scalability of our software, our user base will not increase much. It should be limited to 50-100 smart city employees.

During years 2 and 3, our deployment should cover several hundred smart cities and user base increase to 5-10,000 smart city employees.

In parallel, we will seek to develop partnerships for the coverage of other industries facing the same difficulties of field operators needing upskilling.

Project management and business models.

Experience with solving people-related issues.

Database, cloud and mobile app development.

SaaS with pricing based on number of IoT devices (or tasks). We do not price our service on number of users so that distribution of our mobile application is high. We experience high user adoption which drives our sales to Smart Cities.

We plan to work on automatisation and scalability of our web platform so that implementation within Smart Cities is simplified. This associated with important increase of IoT devices being installed will ensure our sustainability.

Our profitability will result from the important amount of IoT devices that are installed through-out Smart Cities. Our business model is directly linked to the number of IoTs managed through our solution.

Smart Cities develop around the world, translations and market-specific adaptations will help ensure our expansion.

The academic background of Solve is of prime importance to help us with the support we'd like to receive in helping us format our application content. As field operators are sent out to work on tasks, we want to optimize the data they access so that they gain upskilling. 

We are also seeking funding and corporate partnerships that will help us deploy more rapidly as we fine-tune our solution. 

We have seen adoption of our solution by city field operators. This was possible thanks to our presence and support with city staff. As we scale and grow, we will no longer be able to be present. We need to ensure that adoption rates remain high and that we are successful at providing the upskilling expected from technological evolutions within Smart Cities. As stated in the previous section, this is where we expect help from Solve.