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Welcome to the YRP Innovation Challenge 2025

This site is the guide for participants in this event and will help you get up and running, find help, understand prizes, and see the use cases. This is your first stop for the event, and where you should go first if you have any questions.

About the event

This event is a unique collaboration between York Regional Police (YRP), OnX, the University of Toronto (UoT), and Amazon Web Services (AWS), bringing together public safety leaders, academic researchers, and technology innovators to address real-world community safety challenges using AI. York Regional Police is committed to the ethical application of AI, recognizing its importance in maintaining public trust and transparency. The event will emphasize responsible AI use to enhance community safety while safeguarding privacy and promoting shared responsibility.

We expect 200+ participants (University of Toronto Students).

Event sponsors




How do I register?

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What is the schedule for the innovation challenge?

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What are the prizes?

The prizes for the top three submissions are:

  1. A ride in the York Regional Police helicopter!
  2. A ride on the marine rescue boat!
  3. A day at the police training facility!

Plus there will be other swag available. Stay tuned for updates.

Use cases

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Submission guidelines

What you need to provide

  1. Public GitHub repostitory with all code and an architecture diagram of the solution.
  2. Functinoal user interface that works on both mobile and web.
  3. A full demo of the built solution for the judges lasting todo minutes, complete with screen share for the audience.

Info

You can download a complete architecture diagram kit for AWS from this link: https://aws.amazon.com/architecture/reference-architecture-diagrams/

Warning

Only GitHub will be accepted as a location for your finished project. Do not use other code repositories, or somethihng silly like email!

Things you do not need to worry about

  1. Infrastructure as Code. You can create things with Terraform, CDK, CloudFormation, Pulumi, or others if you want to, but it's likely best to "move fast and breat things"!
  2. Making the user inteface "pretty". We are looking for substance, not style!
  3. Cleaning-up the environment when you're done. We have an automated process that will destroy everything when the event is complete.

Team composition and communication

Roles

Each team must have a single captain who is responsible for centralizing communication, creating the lab environment, and otherwise coordinate development throughout the event.

Warning

Only the captain will be able to create an AWS account! They, in turn, will create a log-in for each other member of the team.

This is a suggested team composition:

  • 50% focused on Generative AI using Amazon Bedrock
  • 25% focused on data engineering, feature extraction, query optimization,. This will most likely use include use of Amazon S3 (where the source data resides), Amazon Athena (for serverless queries of this data), and AWS Glue (for creating ETL jobs and data catalogs).
  • 25% on user interface

Tip

You are absolutely NOT limited to use of these AWS services, though they are recommended. As AWS is a sponsor of the event and you have a lab environment in their cloud, this is the recommended approach!

Info

There is a preference for using AWS serverless services, however if your solution requires a virtual server then you can create one in Amazon EC2.

Warning

Note that there are restrictions on the size and category of EC2 instance may create though. These instances cost money to operate, and running a large virtual machine can be very expensive!

Tip

The balance of skills and effort will vary depending on the use case! One size does not fit all!

Required skills

Completing the event requires some programming experience, though the language is left to your own preferences. Typically we see Python and Java as the most common languages for any backend implementations.

Tip

While using a heavy frontend framework such as React.js is possible, we recommend focusing more on backend feature functionality and use of Generative AI. Substance is more important than style.

Discord

A private Discord server has been created specifically for this event. This is the best place to go for help from the OnX and AWS support teams through the #general channel.

Discord screenshot

Info

This link will add your Discord account to the server: https://discord.gg/TtkDaCne

Tip

Create your own team's channel through this server! This gives you an easy way to receive communication about the event, reach out for assistance, and keep your team's effort on-track.

Lab environment

AWS environments for the entire event are funded through a collaboration between AWS and OnX. While this is a generous leeway for creating cloud resources, there is not unlimited budget. Each team will have a budget of todo to build and demo their solution.

Creating the AWS account

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Onboarding other members of your team

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Viewing your remaining budget

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Office hours

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Judges

  • YRP: Chief Macsween, Deputy Chief Da Silva, Manager Greg Stanisci
  • UOT: Christopher Yip, Dean, Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering
  • OnX: Paul Khawaja, President & CEO
  • AWS: Coral Kennet, Head of Provincial Government and Education
  • Sun Life: Abhay Raman, SVP & Chief Security Officer