These Imagine Cup World Finalists have teamed up and used their passion and creativity to develop new ways to solve pressing earth-related issues with Azure IoT, Storage, Artificial Intelligence, and other innovative tech.
The 2021 Imagine Cup is all about innovating to help solve pressing global issues, and this year’s competition is focused on solutions in four social good categories: Earth, Education, Healthcare, and Lifestyle. All tech ideas submitted to the competition were developed under the category that best aligned with a team’s passion and motivation to make a difference. In this feature, we’ll look at innovations in the Earth category.
Earth overview
Students creating projects in the Earth category could build a solution encompassing issues like climate change, agriculture, or green tech. A wide variety of solutions focused on sustainability were submitted, applying Azure technology in unique and innovative ways to environmental issues.
Why it matters
Sustainable Software Engineering is a field which is becoming increasingly important in the work for both climate conservation and designing a sustainable future for all. This field not only focuses on applications that are sustainable in themselves, but also recognizes we all have a part to play in the climate solution through applying tech to help create a better world. Agriculture is also a focus of earth-related innovation, including developing tools to assist farmers, creating more sustainable farming practices, and reducing risk to crops and natural resources.
Our Earth category World Finalists developed projects with a sustainable philosophy at their core, which have the potential to impact our global climate, agriculture, and natural environment.
Meet our Earth category World Finalists:
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Team Green Guru, United States Project: Green Guru
Green Guide is a mobile app that leverages gamification to empower users to lead sustainable and eco-friendly lifestyles. |
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Team Intelligent Hives, Poland Project: Intelligent Hives - Bee Monitoring System
On average, 30% of bee colonies are unable to survive into the next season. Intelligent Hives brings beekeeping into the 21st century. The team's intelligent solution helps save bees, beekeepers, money, and time. |
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Team ProTag, New Zealand Project: ProTag
ProTag is a smart ear tag for livestock that can detect the early onset of illness in real-time, lowering costs and increasing animal welfare along with farmers' peace of mind. |
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Team SimplyLCA, Germany Project: SimplyLCA
SimplyLCA aims to enable companies of every size to participate in the journey towards a sustainable future. To become eco-friendly as a company, the platform uses Azure Storage and Visual Studio Code to allow users to exchange, trade, and publish primary supplier-specific Life Cycle Assessment data. |
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Team Spiffeng, Singapore Project: IoT Hydroponic System
The team's project is an end-to-end automated IoT hydroponic system. It consists of a hydroponics greenhouse connected to an app, which allows real-time remote monitoring and data analysis of user preferences and habits. |
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Team Virtual Radiologist, Nepal Project: Pico Sat
Pico Sat is a miniature version of an environmental satellite, which provides users information about environmental parameters like altitude, temperature, humidity, pressure, dust, and pressure. |
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We’re so inspired by these students’ passion to make a difference and are excited to see them pitch their projects at the World Finals this month. Four winning teams will be selected from each of the competition categories, taking home USD10,000 and Azure credits. These teams will also move forward to the World Championship for the chance to win USD75,000 and mentorship with Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella. Two runner-up teams in each category will take home USD2,500 plus Azure credits.
Follow the action
Follow these teams’ journey on Instagram and Twitter as they head to the World Finals to compete.