Home / Our story

From a walk down the street to a platform.

Urban Pulse is a project by PolePulse Technologies, a non-profit organisation that carries out projects with government support. This page follows the six-step approach in our group report, then tests the idea with a SWOT analysis and a plan for what comes next.

110,000
EVs on Hong Kong roads after four years of growth
1:9
Public chargers per EV — roughly three times short
HK$272M
2019 pilot cost for just 400 lampposts
20%
of Hong Kong's elderly fall each year
Six-step approach

Interest, frustrations, problems, solutions, customers, appeal.

Each step is presented as it appears in the group report, then condensed into the one conclusion that moved us forward.

Experiential learning

Why a website is part of the experiment.

The module follows Kolb's experiential learning cycle. Our project did not stop at a report: the street walk produced a concrete experience, the analysis became conceptual, and the Type A workshop and this website are the active experimentation stage.

  • Concrete experience — walking Mong Kok, Sham Shui Po and Kwun Tong, counting chargers and shade.
  • Reflection — why a pole that is already everywhere does so little.
  • Abstract conceptualisation — the modular platform, cost model and SWOT.
  • Active experimentation — the Design Your Lamppost workshop and this site.
Concrete experience Street walk, counting, listening Reflection What is missing? Abstract conceptualisation Business model & SWOT Active experiment Workshop + website URBAN PULSE
SWOT analysis

An honest look at what could go wrong.

The weakest link: we do not own the lampposts. Every installation depends on a government or partner agreement, so the pilot has to be cheap enough that saying yes is easy.
Future plan

Two kinds of activity, one feedback loop.

Roadmap

What success looks like

Poles retrofitted
400 by 2028, spread across all 18 districts
Cost per pole
Under HK$190,000 for a full loadout
Charging gap
Close a quarter of the public charger shortfall on pilot streets
Emergency reach
A working SOS button within 200 m in dense districts
Participation
3,000 residents voting on designs and functions
Conclusion

Light up the street, serve the world.

Urban Pulse turns existing streetlight poles into shared public service hubs. With government support and a non-profit mission, we deliver clean energy, EV charging and emergency response — serving communities in calm and in crisis. Every pole, a service hub.

Group 3

Who made this.

GEL3027 Entrepreneurship, Innovation and National Security Education in the Context of Humanities · First Semester 2026/27 · Instructor: Dr. Peter Huang · The Education University of Hong Kong.

Where the figures come from

Statistics quoted on this site follow the group report and the public documents it cites: the 2019 smart lamppost pilot (HK$272 million for 400 lampposts), Hong Kong's electric vehicle population (about 110,000 after four years of growth), the ratio of roughly one public charger to nine EVs, and the finding that about 20% of older residents fall each year.

Figures are presented for a student project. Before any real deployment they should be re-checked against the latest Transport Department, EMSD and Census and Statistics data.

What is real and what is simulated

  • Simulated: all pole locations, energy readings, uptime, alerts and vote counts. There is no live hardware behind this site.
  • Illustrative: the map is a schematic drawing, not a scaled survey; the cost model is indicative.
  • Private: reports, votes and alert subscriptions are stored in your own browser only. Nothing is uploaded anywhere.