AT&T Hosts Public Safety Mobile App Hackathon to Provide First Responders with New Innovative Products

In support of its long-standing commitment to public safety, AT&T hosted a Public Safety & Emergency Preparedness Mobile App Hackathon on May 2 and 3 in Washington, DC, at the start-up incubator, 1776. The event, which was organized and led by AT&T’s Developer Program, challenged participants to create mobile solutions to benefit the first-responder community. Developers were presented with four challenges around public safety: team communications, situational awareness, location tracking and augmented reality.  

Members from the first-responder community were onsite to mentor participants, including the State of Maryland Police, Montgomery County Police & Fire (MD), Prince George’s County Police (MD), Alexandria Police (VA), Princeton Fire (NJ), the Department of Homeland Security and the Association of Public Safety Communications Officials (APCO).       

During the 24-hour competition, 100 participants formed teams and worked through the night to create 15 mobile applications that offered real solutions to challenges faced by first responders.  The top three finishers were:

• First Place ($10,000 cash) - Team Beacon – An app that enables people, who are disabled, injured or lost, to quickly and silently communicate their condition and location to a friends, family and emergency professionals. A companion app communicates in real-time on a Google map their location and condition.

• Second Place ($3,000 cash) - Team Beckon - Allows first responders to find persons in distress. In situations of extreme peril, iBeacon can be set to turn on immediately to work in conjunction with geo-fencing during fly overs to find buried cellphones.

• Third Place ($2,000 cash) - Team Glass of Life - Glass of Life helps first responders extricate people from cars using Google Glass and augmented reality to see schematics of cars.

Upcoming Public Safety & Emergency Preparedness Mobile App Hackathons will be held in June in Plano, Texas, and in Palo Alto, Calif., in August.