Biel Digital Glasses, 3D glasses to adapt the world to lower vision

Publications Bank of innovations

Biel Digital Glasses, 3D glasses to adapt the world to lower vision

Biel Digital Glasses

Biel using one of the prototypes of Biel Digital Glasses

Intelligent 3D glasses that facilitate mobility and personal autonomy for people with low vision. Low vision is a visual impairment that cannot be corrected with conventional glasses or surgery. It is a much more common disability than blindness (it affects 7 million people in Europe, and 70 million worldwide) and prevents daily tasks such as reading, moving in public spaces, avoiding obstacles or interpreting signals.

“Biel Digital Glasses” glasses use a combination of new technologies such as 3D vision, artificial intelligence, and augmented reality to adapt reality to the visual ability of people with low vision. In addition to improving images, they identify obstacles, and warn about possible dangers, such as steps or semaphores. In this way, these glasses allow these people to reduce their social isolation and improve their mobility and personal autonomy.

Biel Digital Glasses

Ankommen, an app that guides refugees during their first weeks in Germany

Publications Bank of innovations

Ankommen, an app that guides refugees during their first weeks in Germany

Federal Migration and Refugee Office and Federal Employment Agency, Germany Goethe Institut and ARD-Alpha Bildungskhannel

Ankommen app

Ankommen (arriving) is an application for mobile phones that guides the refugees during their first weeks of arrival in Germany, offering them basic information about the country of reception, on the legislation of refuge and asylum, on programs of professional training and employability, etc.

It also offers online German classes. The APP has versions in Arabic, Farsi, German, English and French. It’s free, does not contain advertising, works for Android and iOS platforms, and can also be used offline.

The development of the application has been possible thanks to a close collaboration between the Federal Bureau of Migration and Refugees, the Goethe Institute, the Federal Employment Agency, and ARD-Bayerischer Rundfunk, a public broadcaster of radio and television.

Ankommen

Misty II, a robot for improving the quality of life of the elderly living alone

Publications Bank of innovations

Misty II, a robot for improving the quality of life of the elderly living alone

Saltó Group, Barcelona City Council

Foto: Barcelona City Council

A robot that moves and interacts with the elderly and offers them support, assistance, and surveillance  by asking them questions about their daily habits (medication, cleaning, eating, etc.) or how do they feel. It can also track or search for users, and it may enable videoconferences with medical services or other services as needed.

The city of Barcelona is carrying out a pilot test with this robot of the Lleida-based company Saltó Group, in some twenty homes for the elderly, in order to study how far the robot can improve the quality of life and the well-being of people  with some kind of dependency, as well as of the caregivers through the assistance of this social robot. It will study, among other things, whether the robot helps to reduce the isolation of the elderly, whether it is used to monitor their health, or if it is useful to improve  patient-adherence to medication medication or attendance to medical visits.

The project also seeks fairness in the care of the elderly so that not only those with a family network or those with higher purchasing power are receiving the right care.

Group Salto
Ajuntament de Barcelona

TripApp, an application to reduce the risks of drug abuse

Publications Bank of innovations

TripApp, an application to reduce the risks of drug abuse

Unsplash

A mobile application that can reduce risks and harms related to drug abuse.

It is based on delivering reliable and objective information and engaging the community. On one hand, the application collects information from a large European network of drug analysis laboratories and alerts real-time to users about the presence in the market of adulterated, contaminated or dangerous drug products. On the other hand, it also offers to the users who use simple colorimetric methods to determine the purity of the drugs, the possibility of directly uploading their they got to the application. This second feature is particularly useful in countries that do not have a network of analysis laboratories.

The app also offers a map for locating drug analysis services, sexual health services, drug use rooms, opioid substitution therapy programs, health and party projects, and exchange  programs for syringes and needles.

To ensure total security and privacy of users, the application does not store any personal data, neither location, nor image metadata.

The application has been developed for Android in 15 different languages. The iOS operating system is expected to be available soon.

TripApp

PACT, Big Data tool to predict the risk of chronic social exclusion

Publications Bank of innovations

PACT, Big Data tool to predict the risk of chronic social exclusion

Universidad Politécnica de Madrid

Foto: Mark Bende, Unsplash

Algoritme desenvolupat a partir de tècniques de Big data i Machine learning, que preveu el risc de les persones beneficiàries d’ajudes públiques de patir una situació d’exclusió social crònica.

L’algoritme s’ha creat a partir de l’anàlisi anonimitzada de més de 16.000 casos i de 60 factors predictius. Mitjançant l’aprenentatge automàtic (machine learning) s’han determinat els deu factors principals de risc, i s’ha desenvolupat una aplicació en línia, accessible per als professionals de Serveis Socials des de qualsevol dispositiu, ordinador, tauleta o telèfon mòbil, que permet que aquests professionals coneguin amb precisió el risc d’exclusió social d’una persona, per facilitar-los així les decisions o actuacions professionals a prendre.

A més, en el marc del projecte PACT també s’ha creat i implementat un programari per a la gestió activa de casos, basat en l’anàlisi de riscos personals. Aquesta anàlisi permet identificar millor les necessitats de formació de cada persona atesa per facilitar la seva inserció socio-laboral.

Pact Project

Artificial Inteligence for identification of social vulnerability

Publications Bank of innovations

Artificial Inteligence for identification of social vulnerability

City of Espoo

Foto: City of Espoo

Big Data Analysis through Artificial Intelligence (IA) of multiple demographic databases to identify which people in a municipality need social help. This is a successful experiment carried out in 2017 by the City of Espoo (Finland), which has analyzed the social, health, and educational data of the entire population of the municipality, around 520,000 people, between the years 2002 and 2016.

Population data has been analyzed grouped according to various family environments, rather than by traditional methods of individual analysis. The results have allowed to identify, for example, 280 predictive factors in the field of childhood vulnerability and to show that, although none of these individual factors is a risk, the simultaneous occurrence of several factors can be a risk.

This pioneering experience of the Espoo City Council has shown that the analysis of a large volume of data from different origins through Artificial Intelligence techniques can play a very important role in the future of Social Services.

Espoo

The Opportunity Atlas, Big Data analysis to optimize the social support system

Publications Bank of innovations

The Opportunity Atlas, Big Data analysis to optimize the social support system

Seattle Housing Authority

Foto: Seattle Housing Authority

A tool for the analysis of anonymized census data in order to optimize the system of public subsidies to the vulnerable population based on the detailed knowledge of the characteristics and social differences between disadvantaged neighborhoods.

The tool has allowed detecting in several US big cities that nearby neighborhoods with very low incomes offer many different opportunities to leave poverty to the children who live there. Seattle Housing Authority has pioneered the analysis of the “Opportunity Atlas” data and concluded that, unlike other American cities, the differences between neighborhoods that offer high social mobility and those that do not, are invisible to the naked eye and only by means of this data analysis it is possible to identify them.

Among other results, the city of Seattle has discovered that most of the subsidies were allocated to neighborhoods with low social mobility and this has led to a rethinking of the social assistance system to promote the residence of vulnerable families in the neighborhoods with a higher social mobility rate.

Seattle Housing Authority

La Webteca Inclusiva, a digital bank of educational resources for inclusion

Publications Bank of innovations

La Webteca Inclusiva, a digital bank of educational resources for inclusion

Down Catalunya

Foto: Down Catalunya

Digital bank of pedagogical resources for the social inclusion of people with intellectual disabilities, aimed at teachers, families, social entities, etc. It includes learning materials, activities to put into practice in the classroom, articles of interest, games and dynamics in the field of leisure and entertainment.

The resources offered have previously been valued and selected by professionals, and users can both download materials and propose materials that they themselves have developed and that may be useful to other professionals of education and care for people with disabilities intellectual.

La Webteca Inclusiva

Les meves ajudes, an on-line tool to facilitate access to social assistance

Publications Bank of innovations

Les meves ajudes, an on-line tool to facilitate access to social assistance

Barcelona’s City Council

Foto: Ajuntament de Barcelona

A simulator called “Les meves ajudes”, allows on line consultation of the social aids a person is entitled to regardless of the Administration that manages them.

The simulator works anonymously and, based on the input, indicates which social aids may be requested, estimates the amount, and links to the procedures to be followed to request them.

Les meves ajudes

AFTS, An algorithm for risk of children neglect or abuse

Publications Bank of innovations

AFTS, An algorithm for risk of children neglect or abuse

Department of Human Services (DHS) Allegheny County, Pennsylvania

Photo: DHS Allegheny County

A Big Data System that provides social services professionals with an objective assessment of the situations of risk of child helplessness and helps them in the detection of cases and in the decision process of activation of the protocols for social intervention.

The Allegheny Family Screening Tool (AFST) is a tool based on specially designed algorithms that analyzes a large number of data from different sources of information. When social services receive information about a possible situation of helplessness or mistreatment, the algorithm calculates the risk index of the case by analyzing more than a hundred parameters such as criminal history, drug use, mental illness or History of child abuse of parents, guardians or people who live in the child’s home

The algorithm provides great accuracy in case detection and as a recent article in the New York Times concluded, “the Allegheny experience suggests that its screening tool is less bad at weighing biases than human screeners have been”.

Allegheny County