Twelve winners have been selected from a pool of 1,400 entries in Verizon’s third annual Powerful Answers Award contest, the company announced Wednesday.
Among the solutions produced by this year’s top 12 developers are a Lifeguard Drone that can identify distressed swimmers and deploy a flotation device to their location; an air-deployable Disaster Mesh Wi-Fi network that can be spread over disaster zones with network node “seeds”; an EmergenSee technology that can stream live video, audio, GPS location and other information from a smartphone to pre-selected contacts and professional responders; and an iHelmet that can bring situational awareness features found in cars to motorcyclists.
Verizon Ventures senior vice president John Doherty said he’s looking forward to meeting with the top contestants and announcing winners at a December 9 awards event in San Francisco
“It’s always exciting to meet these founders and entrepreneurs and share in their enthusiasm for problem solving,” Doherty said. “These winners have not only developed potential world-changing technologies, but they are leading promising companies in a time when the space is incredibly competitive.”
Started at the end of March, the contest asked innovators around the world to submit their best ideas for “powerful technology solutions” that deliver social benefits in one of three categories: Emergency Response, Internet of Things and Transportation. In their entries, contestants were asked to address one of three subcategories specifically with solutions that would improve speed, efficiency and produce wide-scale, long-term benefits to society. Submissions were due by June and finalists were announced in September.
The top prize winners in each category will receive a cash award of $1 million. Second prize winners in each category will receive $500,000 and two third place contestants in each category will receive $250,000. Winners will also have the opportunity to participate in an Accelerator program to help develop and deploy their solutions faster, Verizon said.
Winners of the 2014 Answer Awards included Sesame Enable, a smartphone designed for people with disabilities; Organize, an organ donation program; Eco-fuel Africa, a program to provide communities with affordable green charcoal; and Vaxess Technologies, an innovation that removes the need for cold storage of vaccines.