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Bringing sustainability into the 21st century

Computing students’ digital solution awarded.

A team of University of Tasmania students has been awarded for their innovative approach to digitising sustainability data gathering.

The 2016 ICT Project “Digitran" team won the 2017 Undergraduate Tertiary Students prize at the recent iAwards. The team developed a unique mobile platform to fulfil a vital need in the sustainability space for our University.

The group will now go on to represent Tasmania at the National awards in August.

Their creation Digitran is a unique mobile survey platform allowing the UTAS’ Sustainability Team to undertake critical data gathering, enabling the furthering of its Sustainability Strategy. 

Team member Christopher Balfe-Michael said the students digitised the capture, collection and collation of sustainable transportation survey data via two mobile applications, feeding this digital dataset into an online database and portal.

The Digitran team.

This innovation is unique because it solves some major issues with the current process, namely inaccuracy of the capture mechanism (paper and clipboards) and transcription errors (the transcription of the paper entries into usable digital data).

“Our applications were iteratively designed from the ground using user centric design principles such as ease of use, clarity of input requirement and a feedback loop during development.

“Our software fills a key need in our University by easily, intuitively and accurately capturing sustainable transportation data. Which in turn enables the University to deliver sustainable outcomes for its staff and students.”

Christopher said he was “incredibly humbled” by the team’s victory.

I was so thankful to have worked with such a fantastic team of students and UTAS' Sustainability Team throughout my capstone year at UTAS.

“I was ecstatic to be able to represent UTAS at the Tasmanian iAwards, and to be able to demonstrate the quality of work that can be produced when an innovative student environment is set up and supported through the ICT Project units at UTAS managed by Nicole Herbert.”

ICT Senior Lecturer Nicole agrees.

“This is a fantastic outcome for an excellent team,” she said.

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