Grant: Applied Research and Development Grants - Level 1

contextere provides mobile information curation solutions to companies with field workers. They deliver the 'intelligence' field crews need to perform their specific tasks, ensuring that appropriate data is conveyed to the appropriate worker at the right time. Using their system, field workers are provided the mission-critical guidance for: safety and regulatory conformance; equipment maintenance, operating procedures; troubleshooting, repairs and workflow optimization. Increasingly, data can include live streams from equipment and from the so-called 'Industrial Internet of Things'. This means integrating static data from central repositories with live data from content providers and sensors. Analytics and machine-learning can optimize the data input to the individual worker and, as a result, improve their decision-making processes and productivity. Traditional data management architectures make it difficult for appropriate data to be accessed by teams when they need it the most - for instance under challenging weather conditions. contextere's system is designed to overcome such barriers and to efficiently support the field worker with the right information in context. In addition to managing complex data content and data flow as described above, contextere delivers data and guidance in a format appropriate to the field worker's digital form factor, be it a smart watch, smart phone or tablet, as well as to the worker's experience level. One of the outcomes of this project will be a prototype of an advanced, responsive and portable User-Experience front-end. The scope of the proposed project is multi-disciplinary and will touch upon many of the College's strengths. contextere will benefit from Algonquin's experience in UX design, wireless communications, software development, network administration and live data sourcing from connected equipment.