Central Coast Council was represented recently at a global innovation program for young professionals designed to generate fresh ideas for solving complex community challenges.

The Smart Seeds program brings together bright young minds from different disciplines and sectors to develop innovative concepts to address real life problems.

Central Coast Council’s Water Operations Engineer, Ms Sogol Ghobad, was accepted into the 2016 program covering the Central Coast, Lake Macquarie, Newcastle and the Hunter Region.

Participating in the ‘Seven Year Storm’ challenge, Ms Ghobad worked with a multidisciplinary team over ten weeks to develop ideas for building community resilience. They presented their concept to industry leaders at a showcase event.

“Our region has experienced two, one in one hundred year storms in the space of a decade,” Ms Ghobad said.

“We have learnt a lot from these experiences however, there are areas we could improve in terms of minimising impacts and recovering quickly.

“We came up with the idea of an app called ‘Umbrella’ that would give the user access to accurate real-time information regarding the impact of major storm events on their community networks.

“This could be particularly important for people who have a duty of care for others such as managers, principals, families, sports coaches and other carers.

“Users would enter the details of their networks, such as school communities, sporting clubs, family, colleagues and friends.

“The app would use this information, along with details from various emergency services to create a detailed breakdown of how these people are affected by the storm, such as road closures, power outages and flood alerts.

“By having this information at your fingertips, people can make informed decisions.

“The program gave me a great opportunity to work in a team across a number of disciplines and encouraged us to think outside of the box in finding a solution to the complex challenge. I would really love to see our concept turned into a reality and one day have everyone adding Umbrella to their smart phone.”

Smart Seeds is a global innovation program led by industry and coordinated by GHD. It brings all levels of professionals together with a focus on innovative solutions and demonstrates the potential power of collaboration across organisations, sectors, disciplines and generations.

Council would like to acknowledge the contribution of the organisations that contributed to the success of the program for Ms Ghobad, including ARTC, Roads and Maritime Services, University of Newcastle and GHD.