#interview Living happily in a Clean City becomes possible with the Cortexia company
Cortexia is taking part in the Smart City Day 2017 Innovation Pitch to present the relationship between a city's cleanliness and citizen well-being. Founded at the end of 2016, the company responds to this need by offering cities an objective and automatic cleanliness measurement system based on intelligent vision. Alp ICT wanted to find out more about this innovative project and would like to thank Andreas Von Kaenel, co-founder of Cortexia, for answering our questions.
Alp ICT: How did the idea of an urban cleanliness measure come about?
Andreas Von Kaenel: Before setting up Cortexia, my partner, who was advising cities on the acquisition of sweepers, was faced with a question he couldn't resolve: how many sweepers does a city need? We came to a very simple conclusion: what can't be measured can't be improved. If you want to improve a city's cleanliness and know what resources to commit, you need to be able to measure. So we launched a study.
Our company was born out of a study we carried out in some fifty cities in Switzerland, France and Germany to see if there was a real need. We started from the users' needs, and based our value proposition on the feedback we received. The study confirmed the commitment of cities to improving their cleanliness. Most of them were very interested, and we were able to include the Canton of Geneva, and the towns of Fribourg, Pully and Zurich in our project.
Alp ICT: What are Cortexia's main objectives?
Andreas Von Kaenel: Our goal is threefold:
- Cleanliness
- Cost reduction / economic gain
- Environmental impact (longer term)
Cleanliness is a highly complex subject, ranging from citizen awareness and the urban environment to various forms of cleaning. Measuring the impact of these cleanliness initiatives is very difficult. That's where Cortexia comes in, offering a measurement solution that enables resources to be adjusted according to results.
The aim is not to measure cleanliness per se, but to increase urban cleanliness, which is necessary for citizens (well-being and sense of security), the economy and tourism.
What's more, our solution saves significant costs. You can either achieve better results with the same resources, or better commit resources to achieving better cleanliness. To give you an idea of the budget, cleanliness in Zurich costs CHF 20 million a year.
The cleanest cities are those that spend the least. We conducted a study of three cities in French-speaking Switzerland on costs and cleanliness, which proved that the cleanest cities are those that spend the least: those with a structured approach achieve better results with lower costs.
Finally, in order to measure the environmental impact of city cleaning, we have another project about to get underway, supported by the FOEN (Federal Office for the Environment). To date, the cities of Lausanne and Geneva are participating, and we are in advanced discussions with several French cities.
Cortexia is the only company active in urban waste management that also addresses cost optimization and environmental impact.
Alp ICT: How does the solution you provide work?
Andreas Von Kaenel: The solution was developed as part of a CTI project, in collaboration with EPFL and the HE-Arc engineering school. It has two aspects:
- Measuring cleanliness by offering objective, detailed mapping obtained by cameras and an intelligent vision system that uses Deep Learning. Our mobile cameras recognize and map waste by category throughout the city, and calculate a cleanliness index.
- Data exploitation: highly detailed measurements enable us to implement strategies, which are currently being developed with Fribourg, Geneva, Pully and Zurich.
There's real interest in our solution today: other cities are approaching us and we've been invited to several international conferences between now and the end of 2017.
Alp ICT: Speaking of events, you're speaking at SCD'17 in Geneva on the theme of the Human at the heart of the Smart City. Where do you stand on this subject?
Andreas Von Kaenel: We have our own mobile cameras, but our innovation can also be integrated into fixed cameras, for which we already have requests. So we're offering content that fits in perfectly with these connected cities, with cleanliness measurements to improve citizens' well-being. Cortexia's measurement solution fits in perfectly with the Smart City, which works for the well-being of citizens.
