Galvia, the Galway based AI company has been announced as a finalist in the IT/Fintech of The Irish Times Innovation Awards 2022.

Leaders in their field, Galvia has been nominated for their AI-powered student engagement platform, which has been designed to safeguard the student journey in third level institutions.

John Clancy, Founder and CEO from Galvia, said: “With hybrid learning, cost of living, the accommodation crisis, amongst other challenges, the college experience is at risk.

“Galvia’s platform allows higher education institutions to provide 24/7 student engagement at scale as well as generate insight led data to enhance decision making, ensuring the institution is best positioned to serve and encourage students through every step of their college experience.

“Our team is always looking at ways AI technology can help us do things better in areas that matter, like education. We are delighted to be recognised amongst our peers for the groundbreaking work we have achieved with the University of Galway in particular” added Clancy.

The Irish Times Innovation Awards aim to recognise and promote the best service, product, or operational innovations throughout the island. The finalists were selected by an independent panel of judges to secure a place at the final and a chance to win the overall ‘Innovation of the Year’ award as well as a unique and high profile communications and advertising package worth €100,000. Category Winners will receive a €10,000 communications package in Business+Innovation and a one year premium digital subscription to The Irish Times.

Galvia will be competing against two other finalists in their category. The winners of the competition will be announced at an awards ceremony in Dublin on Wednesday November 9th, 2022.

See more stories here.

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Irish Tech News are Ireland’s No. 1 Online Tech Publication and often Ireland’s No.1 Tech Podcast too.

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If you’d like to be featured in an upcoming Podcast email us at [email protected] now to discuss.

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Article by Vera Petryk, Chief Marketing Officer at EOS Data Analytics, who shares the details of the participatory mapping project in Chad powered by EOSDA’s space technologies using Satellite Imagery.

Chad is a developing country with many communities relying on subsistence farming and pastoralism. Because of climate change and the extreme weather events it bears, it gets harder for them to provide for themselves every new year. Since EOS Data Analytics is a global provider of AI-powered satellite imagery analytics that is driven to make space tech a global driver of sustainability on Earth, it decided to help locals by supplying their leader Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim with a precise map of their area and its resources.

How Satellite Imagery Helped Share Resources In Chad

Knowledge as a way to address the conflict

Mayo-Kebbi Est is one of the regions in Chad suffering the most from climate change. The latter brings disruption in the lifestyles of people so critical it caused a conflict among local communities taking place for more than 15 years. The key issue for farmers and pastoralists is how to use the freshwater points and lands fairly. To address this conflict, EOSDA and Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim initiated a project aimed at creating a precise map pinpointing the local resources and launching a dialog on the ways to adjust to climate change and the ways it affects the environment.

“The project’s objective is to mitigate the ongoing conflict over shared resources between the communities. How? By combining the traditional spatial knowledge of indigenous people and scientific knowledge to create a sustainable resource management strategy and that way to adapt to climate change,” says Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, Member of the Mbororo pastoralist people, Founder and president of the AFPAT.

Building a map for Indigenous people 101

Before creating any map, its requirements should be outlined. In November 2021, after almost two years of meetings and workshops with the leaders of indigenous territories, Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim came up with an area of 1,728 sq km the future map was expected to cover.Then EOSDA obtained a satellite image of the necessary territories using EOSDA LandViewer, a digital tool for on-the-fly searching, visualizing, and processing of satellite data. On the image retrieved by the Sentinel-2 satellite, every 100 m2 was represented by 1 pixel. This means that with the map size of 2.8m x 2.3m, 1 cm was equal to 100 meters of the territory.

Having this image, the team prepared a map layout using QGIS, a software product that helps compose maps using obtained spatial data. This was necessary to annotate the map with objects important to indigenous people. In the end, the map not just contained the satellite image of the territory but also revealed areas with different vegetation densities, wetlands and croplands, as well as roads and settlements.

“Spectral indices are also used for detecting water objects. Additionally, one can use open data sources such as OpenStreetMap to identify objects on the surface and add them to the map. While working with the RGB image, we relied on brightness and contrast parameters, which allowed us to choose similar groups of objects for further map annotation,” adds Andriy Kuzmenko, GIS Analyst at EOS Data Analytics. To print it, the map was exported from QGIS in PDF format.

A map that settled a conflict

Once the map was delivered to Chad, the leaders of 116 communities living in 23 villages across Mayo-Kebbi Est assembled together and spent two weeks making necessary decisions. First, the leaders of those communities shared their knowledge of the lands and took part in the mapping exercise. During these meetings, they defined the disputed areas and resources and decided on how to use them fairly. The outcome of this negotiation was a series of compromises about crop growth planning and cattle corridors. At the end of 2021, the finalized map representing their decisions was presented to lo...

Guest post by Adam Coleman, CEO of Lahinch-based HR software solutions provider HRLocker.

You’ve seen the news and heard the new buzzword. Workers are dissatisfied with their jobs and are silently protesting. Unlike The Great Resignation, they’re not leaving their employers in search of better development opportunities. They’re staying – Quiet Quitting is in full swing.

You might think your organisation is immune, but a new poll has found that 40% of Irish workers under 30 say they do the “bare minimum” to fulfil their job description while their pay or job progression remains unchanged. In short, they’re ‘acting their wage’.

But what can companies do to counteract this trend? Would we see more workers happily engage with their work if it always feels fresh and exciting?

Research says yes. According to a recent Work Institute Retention Report, one of the main reasons employees are dissatisfied is a lack of career development. By providing workers with the opportunity to expand their skills, employers can not only energise their best staff but also plug skills gaps in their company with existing talent.

Now, I’m not saying there aren’t more apparent and critical aspects that need addressing if your workforce is currently resigned to doing the bare minimum. In this instance, you need to examine your organisation from top to bottom and reassess your policies and practices. Learning and development aren’t a silver bullet antidote to the Quiet Quitting pandemic.

What I am saying, though, is that as part of a risk mitigation strategy wherein you bolster productivity, providing colleagues with the opportunity to learn, develop, and grow in the workplace is a way of immunising your personnel against Quiet Quitting.

Don’t just pitch these opportunities to existing staff, either. Learning and development is an additional string to your employer value proposition (EVP) bow. Now more than ever, potential recruits are looking for personal growth in their next job. Learning and development is a top priority for Gen Z, the next big demographic to join the jobs market.

Of course, how these initiatives are delivered will depend on your industry, the needs of your staff, and your business goals. Employers should assess their teams’ current skill levels and determine the desired skill level they’d like employees to reach. For example, if you’re a small business rapidly shifting operations to the cloud, your employees’ digital skills are the first thing you’ll want to upgrade.

Consult with your employees to figure out what takes their fancy. If an employee is interested in a lateral move within your company, you’ll want to ensure that training opportunities outside the scope of their regular job are also available.

To reap the full reward of L&D, programs need to be accessible to everyone. Otherwise, you risk alienating members of staff who wish to develop but don’t have the means to. Employers should implement a combination of social learning (learning on the job, through others), on-demand education (resources, apps, and e-learning platforms), and individualised learning (from industry experts in person, via podcasts, and in written formats).

For businesses experiencing uncertainty because of the cost-of-living crisis, looming recession, and a slowdown in investment, digital learning is likely to be the safest bet. Fortunately, it’s also one of the cheapest and most impactful ways of delivering education.

The CIPD 2021 Learning and skills work survey shows that businesses with a sophisticated approach to technology in L&D are more likely to have a supportive learning environment. In turn, this inspires a greater desire for learning and development, enhancing the supportive climate further. One big, beautiful circle of learning and engagement!

The benefits of well-designed and delivered L&D are ample for employers and employees. When teams are equipped with the skills to take on bigger and bolder challenges – like those experienced during the...

Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology Researchers Design AI Model that Predicts Extreme Wildfire Danger

Combining artificial intelligence and weather forecast models can boost extreme wildfire forecasts by up to 7 days, finds new study

Accurate wildfire risk prediction is essential for an efficient allocation of resources for their mitigation. Current forecast models are, however, incapable of providing sufficiently long lead times. Now, researchers have a developed a hybrid wildfire forecast system that combines deep learning algorithms with existing weather forecast models. The new AI-based system can predict wildfire conditions farther ahead with better coverage than that provided by conventional approaches.

AI Model to Predict Extreme Wildfire Danger

Raging wildfires occurring worldwide have caused tremendous economic damage and loss of life. Knowing when and where a widespread fire could happen in advance can improve fire prevention and resource allocation. However, available forecast systems only provide limited information. Moreover, they do not provide lead times long enough to gain useful regional details.

Scientists have now applied a deep learning algorithm to enhance the prediction of wildfire danger in the Western United States. Researchers from South Korea and the United States developed a hybrid method that combines AI techniques and weather forecasts to produce improved predictions of extreme fire danger out to one week at finer scales (4km x 4km resolution), increasing its utility for fire suppression and management.

“We tried numerous approaches to integrate machine learning with traditional weather forecast models to improve forecasts of wildfire risks. This study is a big step forward as it demonstrates the potential of such an effort for enhancing fire danger prediction without the need for extra computing power,” says lead author Dr. Rackhun Son, a recent Ph.D. from the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST) in South Korea, who currently works at The Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Germany. “The fire danger forecasts could be improved further using constant development in both Earth System Models and recent AI developments,” he adds.

While data-driven AI methods have shown excellent capabilities for inferring things, explaining why and how the inferences are arrived at still remains a challenge. This has led to AI being labeled a black box. “But when AI was combined with computer models based on physical principles, we could diagnose what was going on inside this black box,” says co-author Prof. Simon Wang of Utah State University, USA. “The AI-based predictions associated with extreme levels of fire danger are well grounded to strong winds and specific geographical characteristics, including high mountains and canyons in the Western United States that have been traditionally difficult to resolve with coarser models.”

Computational efficiency is another major advantage of this method. Conventional methods of predicting fire risks at finer spatial resolutions, a process called “regional downscaling,” are often computationally demanding, expensive, and time-consuming. “Although comparable computational resources were required at the developing stage, once the training task for the AI was complete, i.e., performed once initially, it only took few seconds to use that component with the weather forecast model to produce forecasts for the rest of the season,” says co-author Prof. Kyo-Sun Lim at Kyungpook National University, Korea. Therefore, the newly developed AI-based method with the ability to make accurate high-resolution forecasts in a shorter time was much more cost-effective compared to conventional forecast systems.

“In this study, the AI is only tested for fire danger forecasting in the Western United States. In the future, it could be applied to other types of weather extremes or to other parts of the world,” said co-author Dr. Philip J. Rasch of the Pacific Northwest...

Dublin City Council in partnership with Water Safety Ireland and the Department for Rural and Community Development has launched an innovative Smart Ring Buoys project aimed at saving lives on our waters. Smart Dublin worked with technology partners Civic Integrated Solutions Ltd, mSEMICON Teoranta and ZiggyTec Ltd to develop this life-saving technology. The deployment of this new low-cost sensor technology will provide real-time alerts when life buoys are stolen or tampered with.

This problem is an issue for Councils across Ireland and 600+ sensors will now be installed in eight local authorities including Fingal County Council, Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council, South Dublin County Council, Dublin City Council, Laois County Council, Meath County Council, Sligo County Council and Limerick City & County. The Smart Ring Buoy technology works through low-cost sensors paired with a mobile, map-based platform with real-time monitoring. It will alert Water Safety officers when ring buoys are tampered with or go missing and ensure their timely replacement. This is an essential and lifesaving action as a stolen ring buoy could mean a stolen life.

Minister for Rural and Community Development, Heather Humphreys commented, “In 2021 alone, we tragically lost 80 lives through drowning. Such incidents have devastating and long-lasting effects on families and communities. Safety tools like ring buoys are in place to save lives and protect people when they are close to water. Sadly, the theft or vandalism of this life-saving equipment is still commonplace in both our rural and urban communities.

The initiative that I am launching today in conjunction with Dublin City Council is both unique and important. With the support of funding from my Department’s Digital Innovation Programme, we will roll out this sensor technology in 8 different local authorities. This project is a leading example of how the public sector is tackling community challenges with innovative approaches. I want to commend Dublin City Council and all the project partners and stakeholders involved.”

The project began back in 2018 as part of a workshop to identify challenges in Dublin’s Smart Docklands area. Members of the community highlighted that ring buoys were frequently being stolen or tampered with, with a delay to replacement devices being installed. At present, around 15 ring buoys go missing or are stolen every week from Dublin City Council alone costing over €20,000 per annum for replacement. Dublin City Council realised that this was a problem not just in Dublin but across Ireland and set out to find a solution through their Smart Dublin innovation programme. Across Ireland, there are approximately 5,000 life buoys installed.

The Ring Buoy project has taken a unique approach to procurement in an Irish context led by Dublin City Council where the Dublin local authorities have been able to pilot a number of innovative solutions initially and then purchase the best solutions as part of a wider framework with 23 local authorities. The project was shortlisted for an Innovation leadership award from the European Innovation Council – recognising the efforts done by the public sector to promote and implement innovation procurement across Europe.

Owen Keegan, Chief Executive of Dublin City Council speaking about the new technology said, “This is a great example of collaboration across the Irish Local authorities and Water Safety Ireland through our Smart Dublin programme. It is also the first time we have used a procurement approach like this to pilot an innovative technology solution before we buy. We look forward to scaling this type of approach to accelerate the deployments of new innovations that can address city challenges.”

Roger Sweeney, Acting CEO of Water Safety Ireland said, “Every year, ring buoys are used by the public to save lives from drowning however many ring buoys are regularly stolen or vandalised. A stolen ring buoy can mean a stolen life. Ring bu...

We will be reviewing this product shortly, so here is some information about the Dyson Purifier ahead of our review.

Dyson Purifier Automatically senses and captures pollutants. Purifies and Cools you

Dyson purifiers combine intelligent sensing with an advanced filtration system that captures gases² and 99.95% of particles as small as 0.1 microns. And only Dyson purifiers have powerful Air Multiplier™ technology to purify the whole room.

Dyson Purifier machines

Dyson Air Multiplier technology generates the circulation power to draw even distant pollutants into the machine, projecting purified cool air to every corner of the room. In Auto Mode, Dyson Purifier machines automatically sense and capture pollutants – with the ability to capture 99.95% of particles as small as 0.1 microns

Integrated sensors constantly analyse air, while our unique algorithm cross-checks data every second. It diagnoses pollutants at a molecular level, displaying live results on the LCD. (You can see the air quality in your home displayed on the screen/watch the air quality level spike when you cook etc.)

Night mode for lighter sleepers – monitors and purifies using the quietest settings, along with a dimmed display.

€549.99 Price includes VAT

See more product reviews here.

Are you out of contract or looking for a better deal for your mobile phone? If so there are some great SIM Only deals available in Ireland right now with huge savings to be made over long contract plans.

We’ve teamed up with Switcher.ie, the free and impartial price comparison and switching service, to find the best SIM Only deals available every month.

Check back regularly to stay informed of the latest deals and offers and visit the Switcher.ie website to order one of these great packages.

Best SIM Only Deals

Clear Mobile’s SIM-only plan offers unlimited minutes, texts and data all for just €14.99 per month on a 30-day rolling bill-pay contract.

GoMo’s SIM-only Go More plan offers unlimited minutes, texts and data. This SIM-only deal costs just €14.99 per month on a 30-day rolling bill-pay contract.

Looking for 5G?

eir’s connect SIM-only plan is 5G ready and costs just €14.99 per month for 12 months all on a 30-day rolling bill-pay contract. This deal includes unlimited calls, texts and data.

(If you’ve come across this article after some of these deals may have expired, check out our main SIM Only category page to find the latest offers)

More about Irish Tech News

Irish Tech News are Ireland’s No. 1 Online Tech Publication and often Ireland’s No.1 Tech Podcast too.

You can find hundreds of fantastic previous episodes and subscribe using whatever platform you like via our Anchor.fm page here:

If you’d like to be featured in an upcoming Podcast email us at [email protected] now to discuss.

Irish Tech News have a range of services available to help promote your business. Why not drop us a line at [email protected] now to find out more about how we can help you reach our audience.

You can also find and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat.

ServBlock, a Blockchain and pharmaceutical compliance company is collaborating with Microsoft’s Early Access Engineering programme to produce a novel business case for the use of NFT technology in meeting compliance standards.

Servblock translates the current human to human based quality assurance process to a digital first trust system underpinned by machine to machine interactions and blockchain technology, providing verified data that is automatically checked for compliance.

Pharmaceutical compliance entails a multitude of processes requiring manual checking of data and tasks which require detailed attention, passing numerous levels of scrutiny often multiple times. ServBlock automates this process in a much more secure, timely and cost-efficient manner than the current status-quo with the use of blockchain technology.

The use of blockchain helps create validated digital traceability systems for pharmaceutical parts by recording data in real-time throughout a supply chain. With blockchain solutions, pharmaceutical-based transactions and processes can become secure, cheaper, and quicker than usual. For new biotech facility start up projects ServBlock can save 14,400 commissioning hours resulting in an average saving of 1.5 million euros per project.

As well as cost reduction ServBlock’s technology:

Eliminates fraud in the pharmaceutical supply chain

Eliminates the risk of counterfeit or contaminated drugs entering the market

Greatly reduces human error in the supply chain.

Blockchain is most commonly known for its uses in the financial industry and being particularly rooted in cryptocurrency over the last decade, but its fundamental data integrity properties means it is particularly suited to regulated industries, such as pharmaceutical production and distribution.

In collaboration with Microsoft, ServBlock has developed a novel use of non-fungible token (NFT) technology. NFTs are unique cryptographic tokens that exist on a blockchain and cannot be replicated, normally bought and sold. This model presents the perfect framework to ensure transparency for all stakeholders from beginning to end.

John Ward, CEO and founder of ServBlock, said: ‘Implementing new technologies to aid in the continued improvement of compliance standards is a core pillar of what ServBlock does. To have Microsoft on board gives further validation to the work we have been doing since founding the company and blockchain as a powerful business tool. NFTs have gained recognition and popularity for their use in selling art and a new internet culture, but we are glad to be starting the adoption of real world use within an enterprise setting.’

Quality assurance data is tokenized and in this way shows an end-to-end business use case for NFT use in the pharmaceutical industry. Every business process is signed by business participants, stored then shared through a ledger which itself shows ownership of assets from their creation. Every business process is shared among business participants ensuring traceability at every stop.

Small, Medium & Corporate Lead for Microsoft Ireland, Peter Lougheed said: “NFTs are one of the most exciting concepts to emerge from blockchain technology, and have grown to be hugely significant. It’s great to see a Microsoft Founders Hub member, like ServBlock, continue to scale and expand. We, at Microsoft, are excited to collaborate with ServBlock in developing their technology to better enable the pharmaceutical industry to meet their, often very complex, compliance standards.”

This collaboration presents the first use case of NFTs within a pharmaceutical manufacturing setting and therefore uncovers great potential for the use of blockchain technology in a variety of areas which rely heavily on secure, transparent ownership of assets.

See more stories here.

When and where is it on?

The Analog Devices Building – University of Limerick, Thursday 3rd November 2022

How many years has it been going?

This is the inaugural Transforming Education event. We plan to make it an annual gathering of experts in this field.

Human Capital Initiative Conference, University of Limerick,

What exciting things can people look forward to?

This full day conference will be packed with debate and talks from innovators in higher education and industry both nationally and internationally. This event is for academics, innovators and pioneers for best practice in education and skills preparation. Prepare to listen to some interesting case studies and research on:

Disruption in higher education

Industry and education co-design and delivery

Reflections on the University of Limerick’s innovation and transformation

Micro-credentials

Debating the value of a degree

There is a list of international speakers lined up to share their work in respect to the above.

What opportunities are on offer for those attending?

Discovery of international best practice in education that is targeted for workplace based learners.

Listen to reflections from international collaborators in relation to best practice.

Networking opportunities for joint or dual track co-design and co-delivery or workplace based education

Who will be speaking?

Associate Professor Josephine Lang

Josephine Lang is currently the Academic Program Director for the discipline cluster of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences which includes Education and Law within the Melbourne School of Continuing and Professional Education (MSPACE), University of Melbourne. This is a whole-of-university approach to (re)thinking the way The University of Melbourne might engage with professional education.

Josephine is a member of the UL@Work International Advisory Panel, contributing to all WPs as needed

Dr Nan Travers

Nan is Director of the Centre for Leadership in Credentialing Learning at State University of New York Empire State College. Her work focuses on the policies and practices of self-designed student degree programs, advanced standing, the assessment of prior college-level learning and ePortfolios.

Member of the UL@Work International Advisory Panel, contributing to the design of work- based learner online education, WPs 4 and 5 and microcredential / IUA proposal linked to WP7.

Professor Mark Mon-Williams

Mark is Director for the Centre for Immersive Technologies at the University of Leeds and is also leading the creation of a Centre of Applied Education Research, a multidisciplinary Centre based at the Bradford Royal Infirmary.

Mark is a member of the UL@Work International Advisory Panel, contributing to the use of emerging technologies in education and digital literacy for WPs 2 and 7.

Professor Joyce O’Connor

Joyce is Co-Founder of Block W, Chair of the Digital Future Working Group for the Institute of International and European Affairs, and was President of the National College of Ireland for 1 5 years.

Joyce will sit on the UL@Work Advisory Panel with input to postgraduate part- time and full-time programmes for WPs 4, 5 and 6.

Professor Gilly Salmon

Gilly has been a learning innovator for more than 30 years and is one of the world‘s leading thinkers in digital and blended learning. She is currently Academic Director for Open Education Services in the UK and previously, Professor of Innovation and Transformation, and Associate Dean, Online, at the University of Liverpool Management School.

Gilly will sit on the UL@Work International Advisory Panel as an educational consultant in learning and module design and professional development across all WPs, in particular 1, 4, 5 and 6.

Professor lan Solomonides

Ian is Vice President Learning and Teaching at Victoria University in Melbourne. He has led and been involved in a number of large scale changes, including the implementation of the revolutionary VU Block Model, as well as a range of other initiatives designed to...

Virgin Media Ireland and Vodafone Ireland have agreed a wholesale network access deal, which will see Vodafone offering their customers fixed line broadband services using Virgin Media’s superfast fibre broadband network.

The Virgin Media network passes 1 million premises across Ireland, offering broadband speeds of 1Gbps (gigabits per second). Virgin Media’s ongoing €200m network upgrade to full fibre over the next three years will support speeds up to 10Gbps. Virgin Media has already upgraded over 150,000 premises to fibre across the Virgin network.

Through this new wholesale network access agreement between the companies, Vodafone’s customers will now have more choice and will be able to avail of Virgin Media’s expanding Fibre network.

Tony Hanway, Chief Executive of Virgin Media Ireland said, “We’re very pleased to provide network access opportunities to other operators for the first time and we welcome Vodafone as our first wholesale network partner. It’s all systems go as we continue to expand our network nationally and bring ultrafast fibre connectivity to over 240,000 homes by the end of 2022, and over 1 million homes by 2025. Our entry into the wholesale market will support more competition while improving service delivery for consumers, businesses and communities across Ireland.”

Amanda Nelson, CEO of Vodafone Ireland said, “As Ireland’s largest Fibre to the Home market provider, and the fastest growing broadband provider over the last 12 months, we are always looking for new and innovative ways to bring the best products and solutions to our customers. Our new broadband partnership with Virgin Media means Vodafone customers will be able to avail of their Fibre to the Premise network, as they continue to upgrade to fibre around the country.

“Having recently celebrated 21 years in Ireland, we are looking forward to supporting our customers and businesses across the country long into the future, ensuring balanced regional development and a resilient and strengthened economy. Partnerships such as this, demonstrate our continued focus on our significant network investment strategy, as we look to continually upgrade and refresh our capabilities in Ireland.”

See more stories here.