The 1st CASSINI Hackathon connected hundreds of hackers with geospatial information from Copernicus Earth observation data and its services and/or positioning technologies from Galileo & EGNOS. The event took place from 18-20 June across 10 European countries with the aim to develop innovative solutions that sustainably improve our green spaces in urban and rural areas. The CASSINI Hackathon Portugal was organised by Instituto Pedro Nunes (IPN), the coordinator of ESA Space Solutions Portugal. It is supported by Portugal Space, Institute for Interdisciplinary Research of the University of Coimbra, Cáritas Coimbra, Intermunicipal Community of Coimbra Region and Coimbra Functional Fitness.
Urban green spaces are important for the residents of cities and people are becoming more interested in the sustainability of green spaces. ‘Citizeen’ was the winning solution in Portugal and is an innovative solution to solve this challenge. ‘Citizeen’ is an app that uses satellite navigation to locate the user and uses predictive algorithms to notify the user about the state of surrounding green spaces. Thanks to this, citizens can access data about green spaces and spread awareness of potential problems to other users.
Not only have the team behind ‘Citizeen’ created a great solution to Digitise Green Spaces, but they also won hours of expert mentoring with business and technical experts and access to 3 months of virtual incubation at IPN Incubator. The future of green spaces in Portugal looks bright!
Following this, on 24 June, the 10 winners from each location pitched their solution live to a jury of experts who engaged the winners in question-and-answer sessions before evaluating each team. The three winning teams won an additional 100 hours of expert mentoring to support them with the development of their ideas. Here are the winners:
1st Place: ‘Sportcasts’ from the Netherlands – an app that provides real-time environmental data so residents can better plan their outdoor activities.
2nd Place: ‘Tree Count & Care’ from the Czech Republic – a service that identifies the current condition of all trees in a city so they can be taken care of more efficiently.
3rd Place: ‘Sandless’ from France – a tool that analyses past satellite images of other cities to assist in the protection of rural areas for expanding cities.
Johanna Braun, Innovation Consultant and CASSINI Hackathon jury member, congratulated all the teams who pitched at the award ceremony. “It was fantastic to hear from so many budding entrepreneurs passionate about digitising green spaces. Hackathons are a unique opportunity to create innovative solutions in a very short time period, bringing together a diverse collection of people looking to solve important problems – and the teams clearly stepped up to the challenge! I have seen some real potential among these winners to create sustainable, commercially viable space-based products and services. Congratulations to all the teams”.
This is just the first step for CASSINI Hackathons. The next edition will take place from 5-7 November and will connect the Arctic with EU space technologies. More information will be available here: https://hackathons.cassini.eu
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