ويكي:مسابقة تكنولوجيا للجموع

Competition call

It is impossible to imagine the world of architecture and urbanism today without developments such as computer-aided design applications, parametric design applications, smart cities, geographic information systems and building Information modelling. But how many of these applications and tools truly benefit the forgotten 99%? How many of these foci primarily on better quality of life for the underprivileged?

The focus of this call is pilots, ongoing projects, research and pitches for architectural, urban or rural solutions that use technology primarily for the benefit of the masses. Focus is on solutions targeting – or of relevance to - the built environment of Egypt. In March 2020, in a two-day workshop with presentations and discussions in Alexandria, nine to twelve winning proposals will be chosen to present their work to an audience of international experts, one of which will be an appointed reader charged with giving detailed one-on-one critique. Participants will also be introduced to the NilePreneurs Initiative and the opportunity to win incubation support through their program.The call is open for researchers, professionals, students as individuals or in teams. This will be followed by a 7-10 day entrepreneurship boot-camp in May 2020 at Nile University in Cairo. One winning proposal will then be selected by the NilePreneurs Initiative. The prize is incubation support for the project up to 200,000 EGP in kind or cash. This support comes in the form of piloting and prototyping, technical support, dissemination, networking and commercialisation.

This is in addition to visibility support from NilePreneurs Initiative for all selected submissions.

Competition themes

1. Building construction material, technology and finance

This could include innovative solutions to widen the use of traditional building materials such as earth or wood, development of modern materials such as concrete, new solutions for pressing social needs, climate control and improvement of quality of living spaces, or development of new material that could be recycled, more-cost-effective, low tech or zero- carbon. It could also include improvements to how the material is worked, or to the process of construction, maintenance or financing.

2. Built environment systems

This could include issues related to how the built environment functions; transportation, waste, water supply, sewage and sanitation. It could focus on environmentally savvy innovations involving recycling and zero-waste that link to theme 1. It could also focus on tech-based solutions for better quality of life and issues such as safe streets, inclusive design and equitable place-making.

3. Tech-based innovations for general underlying issues

The two themes above have intersections between them and integrated solutions for more than one issue are encouraged. This theme also includes underlying organisational practices related to advocacy, participation, networks and mobilisation, governance and equitable economics and finance and how technology may facilitate improvements that focus on the built environment.

Submission format

Two high quality A2 sheets with relevant information including graphics and visuals (free format – max. 5 MB) A 800 word abstract to be filled through an online form including:

• Project title
• Author names and affiliations
• Short description with intended user and market (400 word)
• Current level of development of idea (100 word)
• Development timeframe (100 word)
• Required support (100 word)
• Expected output after support (100 word)

Please fill the form on the following [https://forms.gle/WKaV1RjFi5zfLhcU9 link[

send A2 sheets to omar.elkousy@gmail.com with the same title used in form

Make sure to include THE SAME project Name you used here in the email subject and the word TFM_COMPETITION (ex. TFM_COMPETITION_YourProjectName)

Selection criteria (all of equal weight)

The proposal should present solutions that are:

• Innovative
• Applicable
• Relevant to Egypt and equivalent contexts
• Technically sound
• Affordable
• Economically viable

Selection Committee and Respondents

The international committee members including - but not limited to - IMPAQT project partners and will be announced soon.

Venue

The two-day workshop and prize giving ceremony will be held at Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Alexandria on the 27th and 28th of March 2020. Transportation by train within Egypt and one night of hotel accommodation will be covered by the organisers for out of towners. The boot camp will be held at Nile University in Cairo in May 2020 (exact date tba). Participants are responsible for their own expenses.

Timeline

16 February 2020 Announcement of open call for participants

10 March 2020 Deadline for application

18 March 2020 Selection and confirmation of participation

20 March 2020 Announcement of participants and sending materials to readers

27 & 28 March 2020 Workshop in Alexandria

May 2020 Entrepreneurship boot camp in Cairo

June 2020 Judging and announcement of winner

IMPAQT

This competition is part of IMPAQT, a project co-funded by Erasmus+ programme of the EU between Egyptian and European academic partners. The aim of the project is to develop a new breed of architects capable of initiating a paradigm shift in Egyptian architecture practice; to become more integrative, multidisciplinary, people-centered, and technologically agile, utilizing ICT enabling technology to better consider the social and psychological dimensions of design and meet the needs of current and future generations, to create supportive and inclusive settlements that positively impact human well-being, safety and satisfaction leading to the prosperity of cities convincing other actors and shapers of the environment to adopt this approach.

European Partners

• Technische Universität Wien – TUW (project coordinator)
• Universitat Politècnica De Catalunya – ETSAB
• Universität Kassel – KU
• Università di Cagliari – UNICA

Egyptian Partners

• Nile University – NU
• Ain Shams University - ASU
• Suez Canal University – SCU
• Alexandria University – AU
• Housing and Building National Research Center – HBRC
• Engineering Consultants Group – ECG

Nilepreneurs Initiative

NilePreneurs is a national, fast growing, initiative funded by the Central Bank of Egypt, and implemented by Nile University. NilePreneurs aims to enhance the ecosystem for entrepreneurs in Egypt through its different programs: education, incubation, innovation and growth support. The initiative works closely with different banks, governmental entities and international organizations to achieve its targets.

Architecture and Urban Design program (ARUD)

One of the main outputs of IMPAQT project is the 5-year undergraduate program to be fully implemented at NU. All IMPAQT partners contributed to this deliverable, including deciding on Courses titles/ ECTS/ Description of course objectives/course content/pre-requisites and the level at which each course should be taught resulting in a 5-Year Plan for the undergraduate program called ‘Architecture and Urban Design’ - ARUD. Partial implementation of the program will occur in the Egyptian academic partner institutions, either as elective courses or as additional and new content to already existing courses in their undergraduate and graduate programs. The total number of courses in the new undergraduate program is 53 courses equivalent to 160 Credit Hours (CH) equivalent to 280 ECTS. On 9th September 2018, ARUD Bylaws were approved by the Supreme Council of Universities. The implementation of the undergraduate program at NU started in Fall 2018.

Application

Project title

Wiki Umran - Data processing and visualisation component

Author name/s and affiliation/s

Karim Ghaleb - Project Coordinator and Editor

Ahmed Gharbeia - Project Consultant and Trainer

Ahmed Zaazaa = Editor

Contact Person name

Karim Ghaleb

Contant Person Email

karimahmedghaleb@gmail.com

Contact Person Phone number

+20 1118399362

Short description with intended user and market (Max. 400 Word)

Wiki Umran is an open knowledge platform specialized in urban related content. The platform aims to collect, organize and accumulate the knowledge produced about our built environment and the fields of knowledge intersecting with it. The platform will provide the scholars with an archive of studies, reports, designs and a dictionary of urban related concepts and theories in Arabic.

The platform is developed collaboratively and cumulatively by Arabic speaking researchers, designers and scholars of the field. And since the platform documents it's own development, other researchers and students are able to view and learn from our own learning process; and how the knowledge was produced collaboratively on the wiki. The wiki is mainly targeting individuals and institutions working in the field but others will benefit from the publicly accessible content such as:

• Architecture and urban design firms: providing them with uptodate and easy to access information, data and relevant theoretical outcomes and resources
• Real estate market: providing it with knowledge that can aid them with local best practices
• Culture, arts and media sector: providing the interested from artists, journalists, film makers and others with content that can feed their creative processes about urban related issues.

In the first year the core team will be targeting content developers in Cairo and other cities in Egypt. Afterwords the team will outreach to individuals and institutions in the core team network of urbanists working in other Arabic cities such as Beirut, Amman and Tunis.

After the platform starts to shape it's identity with a critical mass of content, the team will be working on empowering local communities to be able to work on the wiki and document their knowledge about their built environment. However, this objective is left in the future vision so as to have the human capacities and funds to be able to work on the grassroots level by building their capacities.

Moreover, collaborating with vocational and educational institutions is within the wikis vision to link both academia and practice.

2. Current level of the development of idea (Max. 100 Word)

The platform is running online since December 2019. Currently, the core team is seeding and seeking interested individuals to join the team of content developers; the aim for the first year to reach out to and have a group that can feed the wiki with content. Simultaneously we are developing the technology that would support the work of the wiki to have it running as a data base that others can query its contents and reconstruct it.

3. Development timeframe (Max. 100 Word)

• December 2019 - March 2020:

Kick off the project - organize the first Wiki Umran workshop and training- Setup the platform and develop the extensions, templates and tools needed

• March 2020 - June 2020

Have a batch of content that includes: urban design projects - codes and design criteria - archive of studies, reports, training tools, maps, raw data repository ...etc -

• June 2020 - September 2020

Organize another wiki workshop and start outreach and dissemination efforts in Beirut

• December 2020

The current funding of the project ends with assessments and another annual plan is set

4. Required support (Max. 100 Word)

Some of the content developed on the wiki will include a repository of raw data either quantitative or qualitative; such as information about neighborhoods and districts in Cairo. And the current funding will not necessarily enable the core team with the available technical, financial and human resources to develop the back end of the wiki. For example, we can need support to excavate and handle big amounts of data and process it and visualize it on the wiki; and make it available for others to query and build upon.

5. Expected output after support (Max. 100 Word)

• A dynamic and interactive atlas for at 15 districts in Greater Cairo that will include aspects such as: historical background, geospatial data, population data, public services photos ...etc
• Archive of studies, reports, articles ...etc
• An Arabic dictionary of concepts and theories related to the built environment
• A library of books and films related to urbanism
• Codes and criteria for architecture and urban design
• Other content that we are anticipating to be inspired from the content developers

Supporting Documents

Please send your two high quality A2 sheets with relevant information including graphics and visuals (free format – max. 5 MB) to omar.elkousy@gmail.com Make sure to include THE SAME project Name you used here in the email subject and the word TFM COMPETITION (ex. TFM COMPETITION_YourProjectName

Pitch process

المقترح تخطي مرحلة الاختيار الأولى. شارك منسق الويكي في معسكر تدريبي أول شهر يونيو سنة 2020. شمل التدريب على محاضرات لتطوير الفكر التجاري لإدارة العمل ماليا وأمور متعلقة بالتسويق. مطلوب الآن العمل على عرض لتقديم الفكرة وعرضها على لجنة تحكيم لإختيار الفائز(ين) وإحتضان المشروع ضمن أحد برامج نايل-برونِرز. العرض يشمل النقاط التالية:

• نبذة عن فكرة المشروع في ثلاثة سطور
• المشكلة الموجودة في السوق ولسببها فكرت في الحل دا
• ما هو الجديد في فكرتك ولذلك تريد الدعم من طرفنا
• وصف المنتج والحالة (رسمة أو صور أو فيديو للمنتج) يتضمن (مرحلة الفكره – مرحله النموذج الاولى – مرحله اثبات الفكره عمليا )
• من هو العميل المستهدف لشراء المنتج
• مصادر الدخل/ نموذج العمل
• من هم المنافسين بالسوق وكيف يختلف منتجك عنهم؟
• حجم السوق/السوق المستهدف/ العملاء المستهدفة
• فريق العمل ( ادارى وفنى
• ما هو الرقم المبلغ المطلوب(الفلوس كام) وهتعمل بيها ايه
• الخطط المستقلبيه