Write a commentFinance Minister Conor Murphy has visited a Newry environmental project to see first-hand how it has benefitted from the Department’s Open Data Innovation and Outreach Fund. Minister Murphy praised the project stating it was putting Newry on the map in terms of digital innovation.
Smart Newry was awarded almost £8,000 through the fund which it has used to deploy sensors around the city to gather environmental data for use by businesses, schools and local government.
Speaking following the visit, Finance Minister Conor Murphy said: “It’s great to see the success of the Smart Newry project and the innovative way they’ve used the Open Data Fund to benefit the local community.
“This fund has provided entrepreneurs and organisations with a real opportunity to use public sector data for commercial opportunities and drive future economic growth. I look forward to meeting with other recipients of the fund in the near future.”
Smart Newry is a Newry 2020 project with members of Newry 2020 and Newry Digital providing a smart city project for Newry. Sensors are deployed around the town to gather data that could be useful for citizens.
Their goal is to empower the local community with the necessary environmental data to influence decisions at local government and business level with the aim of improving living conditions, quality of life and allowing local schools & colleges access to a wealth of real world data for analysis, projects and learning purposes.
Brian Cleland, co-founder of Smart Newry, said: “We were delighted to welcome Minister Murphy to Newry today to show how the Open Data Fund has enabled us to deliver this innovative smart city project.
“The Fund has allowed us to deploy the first nine ‘Smart Citizen Kits’ to a range of local business and community-based premises across the city. These devices are collecting real-time environmental data which will be available for anyone to use at no charge.”
See SMARTNEWRY.COM for more information
