CREATIVE RESPONSES TO COVID-19.

Therma tackles two of the biggest causes of global warming: food waste and refrigerant emissions. Therma’s namesake IoT-based, 24/7 equipment monitoring solution eliminates product loss, improves food safety, and provides data-driven refrigeration management for the food industry, which can save businesses up to $15,000 a year per location.

Therma’s mobile checklist app, CoInspect, includes the latest CDC-based COVID-19 Prevention Checklists, which have been deployed across thousands of restaurants, supermarkets, and food manufacturers to help protect consumers and employees. Therma is offering its mobile checklist and sensor monitoring tools at discounted rates to U.S. businesses nationwide impacted by COVID-19.

Delivery and supply-chain risks are particularly critical for healthcare institutions, pharmacies, and home-bound elderly populations. EVA’s high-throughput drone docking stations allow for robust and automated supply chains, utilizing drones that connect point A to point B with no driver required. EVA is currently working with partners in Europe and New York State to deploy its technology as part of COVID-19 disaster-response plans.

Food for All is a marketplace for surplus food, with the mission of making quality food affordable to all while stopping delicious meals from being wasted. In response to state-wide lockdowns, food shortages, and dine-in bans due to COVID-19, Food For All has introduced two new programs to support the food industry as well as the communities in the Boston and New York areas.

– Meal Matching Program: anyone can now help by donating Food for All Meals to people facing financial hardship. Most meals are around $5 and 100% of donations will go to recipients. Learn more and donate at: mealstoday.org.

– Pre-Ordering: users now have the option to support local restaurants from home by pre-ordering Food for All Meals to be redeemed when restaurants are back to regular hours. Learn more at: helpingrestaurants.org/online-store.

Research-based respiratory protection company, AŌ AIR, has developed The Atmos – a wearable device that provides air filtration equivalent to a hospital operating theatre. Using patented PositivAir technology, The Atmos utilizes fans to create a positive-pressure, clean-air environment that allows the wearer to breathe freely without requiring a seal around the mouth and nose. Masks are critical for frontline healthcare workers treating COVID-19 patients, but current PPE like the disposable N95 respirator have displayed shortcomings in performance and distribution. The Atmos was initially designed to protect against air pollution, but in response to the pandemic, AŌ AIR is in the process of redesigning the device to better suit the healthcare industry, as an alternative to N95 masks.

GreenQ makes garbage trucks smarter by using sensors to calculate weight and identify contents in real-time to optimize the waste collection process. In response to COVID-19, GreenQ developed SafeGuard-GQ to allow cities and contractors to improve the safety of waste management and its essential staff before, during and after waste pickup.

The system provides the following features:

– Monitoring of waste pickup in real-time

– Alerts before arriving at potentially contaminated locations, allowing the team members to prepare accordingly by performing the approved protocols for safety

– Reporting on pickup locations and routes per truck to maintain and enforce defined safety measures including social distancing and special cleansing policies

Thrilling, an online marketplace for vintage and second hand stores, has launched Save Vintage Stores: an initiative to help 100 small independent stores in the U.S. that have had to temporarily close to curb the spread of the coronavirus. Thrilling aims to raise $100,000 to provide financial assistance to store owners who are at risk of going out of business due to the mandated shutdowns. To learn more about Save Vintages Stores, go to shopthrilling.com/SaveVintage.

Circuit uses an on-demand app, fleets of electric cars and teams of full-time drivers to offer eco-friendly first/last mile solutions and reduce single occupancy vehicles (SOVs). In compliance with social distancing protocols and CDC safety precautions, Circuit has reduced operating hours and pooled rides in accordance with social-distancing mandates. Circuit is now providing essential mobility services for residents including grocery shopping, medication pickups, and essential travel. The service is also offering to assist with food deliveries to the homebound elderly population, frontline healthcare workers, and first-responders.

Lunewave, developers of high-performance sensor technology for autonomous vehicles as well as a high-frequency Luneburg lens, is using 3D printing to produce reusable face masks and face shields to support 12 hospitals and clinics across Arizona, Massachusetts, Michigan, and California, including Arizona Oncology Clinic and Beaumont Health Systems.

Near Space Labs offers unprecedented high-resolution, high-frequency imagery. Its stratospheric robots scan very large areas daily with 30-centimeter resolution. With frequent and highly detailed information, Near Space Labs is able to map and assess hyper-local economic impacts of the pandemic as well as measure the pace of the eventual recovery post-pandemic by providing easy and affordable high-resolution optics and data on-demand to cities and businesses of all sizes. Near Space Labs provides crucial data where it’s needed most, recently supplying imagery of Madrid to state, local and county officials free of charge.

Ometry, a road-safety and risk-technology company, has launched Crash Atlas, an interactive resource that tracks and monitors state-by-state trends in vehicle crashes and related fatality rates (which are on the rise) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Crash Atlas distills millions of crash reports from around the country and provides timely assessments of road safety, to make sure everyone taking to the road gets home safely.

Ginkgo is used by business communities in cities across the U.S. to track local conditions for real estate, public spaces and retail businesses. The sudden and unpredictable changes to these brick-and-mortar communities resulting from the pandemic have been difficult for traditional information sources like Google Maps to keep up with. Ginkgo is helping to create accurate maps of real-time conditions around neighborhoods, including new hours of operation and changes to services like curbside pickup options. As a result, the company’s cloud platform is able to provide an overall measurement of the pandemic’s impact on the community day-to-day, and help decision makers chart out a clear road to recovery.

Numina is sharing insights from its sensors in 20+ cities across three continents to understand the impact of COVID-19 on the public realm, as well as the efficacy and impact of social distancing and shelter-in-place on individual mobility behaviors. Focusing on actual paths traveled by people and vehicles in the public realm, Numina measures all forms of street-level activity in a privacy-first way, turning data into actionable insights for urban planners, real estate developers, and mobility companies.

Upshift is a fractional car subscription service that removes all the friction from owning a car. It delivers a Toyota Prius or RAV4 Hybrid to a subscriber’s door when they need it. Its delivery concierge disinfects cars before every delivery, washing hands frequently, using hand sanitizer (available in all our cars), and wearing a mask. Upshift is currently building a mobile app and integrating telematics to locate and unlock cars via app so it no longer needs to meet drivers in person. This service eliminates the need to share a vehicle with strangers like in rideshare, or touch a steering wheel in a shared car that has not been disinfected.