The Olympics are great for technology. Yes, the competition held every four years highlights amazing athletes. But its vast support network relies on numerous technologies, including GNSS.
GNSS technology helped fans follow the canoe sprint and rowing events in Rio in more detail than before. With GPS devices attached to every vessel, spectators were able to see key data such as speed and direction — information that helps when following a lengthy race taking place offshore.
For the first time, Olympic athletes used high-tech wearables to give them an edge. Solos Smart Eyewear was designed for the USA’s Cycling team with features that allowed cyclists to see key metrics such as speed, power, distance, cadence and heart rate, plus more data from any number of connected sensors.
Drones Aloft. Drone technology has exploded since the London 2012 Olympics. In Rio, broadcasters experimented with hovering cameras. The BBC worked with Open Broadcast Service to provide international broadcasters with drone coverage of the rowing.
As for hobbyists, drone-maker DJI updated its firmware with Olympic geofences, preventing drones from flying over events. Not every drone manufacturer implements geofences, so the Brazilian military was equipped with new devices to jam drone-control signals mid-flight. The IACT DroneBlockers blast incoming drones with radio signals, effectively jamming the signal from the controller.
Beware Zika. Meanwhile, mapping technology is helping to track the spread of the Zika virus. Before the games, the World Health Organization launched a Zika app to provide information about the disease.
After the Olympics, IBM will provide local authorities with ways to track weather, social media data and travel patterns. Esri is supporting local authorities and coordinating field workers to track and contain the disease in Brazil and elsewhere.
Before each day of Olympic sailing kicks off, an air and water team is gathering any floating rubbish in Rio de Janeiro’s Guanabara Bay. Helicopters circling above spot floating trash and send GPS coordinates to trash-collecting boats that sweep up the debris, reports the Associated Press.
Other stop-gaps to enable sailing in the polluted bay include floating barriers to keep rubbish from entering the bay, using naturally occurring microbes to break down pollutants, and hygiene briefings for sailors and staff, who treat themselves with anti-bacterials after entering the water.
Besides pollutants, another obstacle is discarded furniture. A Sky News reporter tweeted that an Olympic kayaker on a practice run capsized after hitting a sofa. The Olympic organizers are currently investigating, while the Twitter world entertains itself with the tag #kayaksofa.
It is estimated that at least half of Rio’s sewage flows untreated into its waters, rife with unseen viruses and bacteria. A year-long, independent study by AP has shown high levels of viruses and sometimes bacteria from human sewage in the bay, where hundreds of sailors and windsurfers are competing for medals.
Rio state officials have acknowledged a real cleanup of Guanabara will take 20 years, though organizers originally promised to complete the cleanup in time for the Olympics.
In response to the need to keep the planet’s waters clean, one English company is developing a solar-powered, autonomous “sea vacuum” designed to clean up plastic.
Pointer Telocation Ltd. – a developer, manufacturer and operator of Mobile Resource Management (MRM) — signed a contract July 18 with CET RIO (the Rio de Janeiro Transit Authority) to provide technology and integration services during the 2016 Olympic Games, managing the vehicles and personnel responsible for transit control, emergency and contingencies.
More than 200 vehicles will be monitored in real time which will be managing, controlling and supporting the traffic management systems starting Aug. 5 and throughout the games.
The system will use Pointer’s Web Fleet Software Platform and will be integrated into the CET Control Center as well as the COR (the city’s Operation Center), providing a unified view of traffic information throughout Rio.
“We are very pleased to be playing an important role in the smooth running of the Olympic Games this summer,” said David Mahlab, chief executive officer of Pointer. “Our selection by Rio’s Transit Authority for this very high profile event and mission critical task, demonstrates a strong level of trust in our solution. We look forward to successfully delivering on this contract, and we believe this will provide us with very strong references for further work in the region.”
what3word’s three-word addressing system has been integrated into numerous mapping and navigation services ahead of the Summer Olympics, being held in Rio de Janiero, Brazil, Aug. 5-21.
what3words is used in the RioGo app (which won the Rio Olympics Transport Challenge) and Navmii, an offline satnav app.
what3words makes it easy to find and get to any location in the world, the company explains. The service works both online and offline, and is based on a location reference platform that uses a global grid of 57 trillion 3 x 3-meter squares. Each square has a unique pre-assigned three-word address, no matter how remote. This makes it easy to both pinpoint an address and communicate it — in whichever of its nine different languages travelers prefer, including Brazil’s national tongue Portuguese.
At the Olympics, specifying exactly where to meet or where to go can be difficult. For example, there are four entrances to the Aquatic stadium: expired.stud.cucumber, carbon.padding.puddles, ducks.hillside.frocks and saying.rosette.slogged.
Meeting friends or family in the Olympic Park is easy — meeting at forgiven.milder.dragon (the handball entrance in the Future Arena). If medical attention is needed, tourists can navigate offline to the Jacarepagua Pharmacy is at hint.laws.squares, while the Victoria Hospital is at reheat.admit.take
Outside of the Olympic Park, tourists can park near the Christ the Redeemer statue at puff.goggles.really, or find the start of the walking trail to Sugar Loaf at replays.chain.assist.
Getting around with what3words
There are many different ways what3words will be used during the Olympics. what3words is in RioGo, the official Olympics public transit app — so visitors can use multi-modal journeys (bus, bike hire, walking, taxi…) to navigate around the city.
For navigation when walking or driving, users can type in three-word addresses into Navmii for offline routing to and from three-word addresses.
PocketEarth, an app available on Apple OS, lets users view worldwide street maps and key locations of hostels, cafés, bars, hiking trails and more. Guests simply download the offline map for Brazil and they can navigate the entire country simply, using 3 word addresses for every location.
When planning their trip, visitors can use TripUGo’s travel guide to find museums, swimming spots, adventure playgrounds, hiking and biking trails and much more. Every TripUGo location has its 3 word address listed — from the skatepark at akward.tilting.beams or the Casa do Pontal Museum at owner.includes.solo to the surf spot at Saquarema beach.
Guest houses are now listing their three-word addresses to make sure travelers can find them, even offline. Brazilrentmyhouse.com, for example, set up by entrepreneur Matthew Parker to help visitors find local accommodation during the Rio Games, lists three-word addresses for each rental.
Rio Security
DigitalGlobe has developed an extensive security package to ensure the safety of guests and athletes during Rio 2016. Using its fleet of WorldView satellites, DigitalGlobe’s package that detects disruptions to infrastructure, identifies high-crime zones and offers the most up-to-date imagery of Rio as seen from space, providing security officials with the information needed to formulate comprehensive security planning. It also will help people avoid mosquito zones (Brazil is facing a servere Zika virus outbreak).
what3words has been integrated into the platform. While GPS coordinates are accurate, communicating long strings of numbers between humans is prone to error. With what3words, security teams and those on the ground can quickly identify and easily communicate incidents, team rallying points, helicopter landing sites or temporary triage tents. They can share an accurate location with a paramedic, a security team member or even with civilians and guests.
The DigitalGlobe Rio Olympics security package consists of more than 100 geospatial layers containing over 80,000 features and 1.25 million building footprints, extracted and compiled from DigitalGlobe imagery and publicly available data.
Brazil doesn’t track addresses for its favelas, such as Rio’s largest, Rocinha.
what3words in the favelas
The residents of Rio’s largest favela, Rocinha, already know all about the efficiency of what3words. According to many official maps, Rocinha is just an empty space. More than 3,000 streets and the homes of more than 70,000 residents are invisible.
The Brazilian post office does not deliver in favelas, but a local co-operative, Carteiro Amigo, is using what3words to address every single house in the teeming favela to safely deliver letters and parcels.
GNSS technology helped fans follow the canoe sprint and rowing events in Rio in more detail than before. With GPS devices attached to every vessel, spectators were able to see key data such as speed and direction — information that helps when following a lengthy race taking place offshore.
