Image source: Scottish Government
The Scottish Government has launched the new round of its CivTech accelerator programme, indicating it could lead to contracts with a total value of up to £10 million.
It has also highlighted the eight projects winning shares of £4.5 million under round eight.
CivTech is a government run accelerator programme for digital public services, launched in 2016 to promote innovation into how the Scottish public sector uses technology.
The new round is focused on a range of areas, including the natural world, supply chain development, food security, cyber security and core government services.
It involves nine challenges as follows:
- How can technology help to rapidly and accurately gather and analyse stress, pests and disease data in trees and wild plants?
- Using technology to help women access the right support in response to the menopause.
- Helping wildlife rangers identify the location of every animal larger than 5kg in a specified area in real time.
- Helping to source venison through sustainable deer management practices.
- Using technology to create an efficient and secure supply chain for public sector procurements.
- Protecting the public sector against ransomware and other forms of cyber crime.
- How can technology help increase access to public services by making use of people’s existing trusted relationships?
- Providing people with an individualised communications channel for interactions with the public sector.
- How can technology and data create and streamlined experience for people and businesses to get training, guidance, support and approval for licences they need – beginning with tobacco and fireworks products?
The Scottish Government has indicated that more challenges could be added over the summer.
It has also flagged up the winners of round eight, which have been showcased at a demo day this week:
- Identifying and prioritising support for people in the most vulnerable situations, starting with those having energy problems - HelpFirst has developed an AI driven customer prioritisation system to help identify consumers most at risk of harm, enabling targeted support.
- Driving effective resource management for a multiskilled workforce – ITER IDEA has developed a platform enhanced with AI capabilities to give a systematic overview of resources’ skills, projects, availability and location.
- Using technology to create a nature network across Scotland by 2030 – AECOM has created a platform to support habitat protection, creation and investment decisions whilst facilitating community and landowner led nature network projects.
- Assessing and identifying projects and opportunities to improve and increase investment in Scotland’s marine natural capital - Two businesses have received support. Tritonia uses georeferenced photogrammetry, an emerging technology that enables marine environments to be reliably quantified and monitored. AECOM will develop tools to enable project design and collaboration in marine natural capital.
- Using technology to help NatureScot flexibly manage its understanding of the state of protected areas by making best use of available evidence – Informed Solutions has developed an environmental asset management platform that uses spatiotemporal intelligence and AI to provide domain-specific insights on ecosystem health.
- How can biodiversity credits be designed in a way that provides simplicity for projects and buyers, and enables investment in Scotland’s nature? – CreditNature will develop a solution to support investments in nature recovery by measuring changes in ecosystem integrity, and assessing nature positive impacts and biodiversity related risk.
- Using technology to predict and measure the impact of projects and investments – Port F to deliver a technology solution to predict and measure the impact of projects and investments.
- Using technology to support the circular economy and net zero ambitions – Looper will deliver a digital circularity assessment tool and marketplace platform to help local businesses in the south of Scotland achieve these aims.
Richard Lochhead, minister for small business, trade and innovation, said: “This is exactly the kind of creative thinking we want to encourage through our National Innovation Strategy, which sets out our vision to become one of the most innovative small nations in the world over the next decade.
“I am looking forward to seeing the latest inspiring projects from CivTech 8, and help launch new challenges with £10 million Scottish Government support.”
