During the Climathon in Toronto, Canada, students, entrepreneurs, big thinkers, technical experts and app developers from a range of academic and professional backgrounds came up with innovative new solutions to bring down the city’s carbon emissions during a 24-hour marathon session.
HotPopRobot, the Toronto Climathon’s youngest team, scooped the event’s first prize as well as the Climate Hero prize for the largest emissions reduction with a surprisingly simple and implementable solution to reduce the city’s carbon emissions. The team included technology enthusiasts Artash (10) and Arushi (7) along with their parents Rati and Vikas Nath.
The Toronto #Climathon's 1st and Climate Hero prizes go to the young & brilliant #HotPopRobot's emissions research and surprising solution! pic.twitter.com/8Z4Iog1kcN
— MaxQ (@MaxQAccelerator) October 29, 2016
The hackathon was part of an unprecedented global climate action initiative that saw some 60 major cities across six continents such as Shanghai, Paris and Sydney take part in a challenge organised by the European Union’s climate innovation partnership, Climate-KIC.
The hackathon organised by MaxQ Accelerator and Lighthouse Labs took place from Friday 28 October until Saturday afternoon and featured a kick-off speech by Ontario’s climate change minister, Glen Murray.
“Everything is connected to everything else, which is why hacking and the internet and coding are so important because you really are the people who can connect everything else and can see the ecosystem and complexity of ideas, and understand the role of technology and information and how that brings everything together to solve problems,” Murray told participants, most of whom he said would be “touched by climate change in a much more profound way than those of us who are in the second half-century of our life.”
Just learning about hacking & coding from a 10 yr old & a 7 yr old @ #Climathon #Toronto pic.twitter.com/lw8dFigGzv
— Glen Murray (@Glen4ONT) October 28, 2016
The Power of Big Data
Organisers MaxQ Accelerator, Canada’s first space-data startup accelerator, and Lighthouse Labs, which educates and transforms budding software development talent, provided the participants with data sets from sources such as NASA and the City of Toronto’s Open Data Team.
MaxQ Accelerator president Brodie Houlette commented: “I’m so pleased with the results of the Climathon. We set a very ambitious target to show city planners that the use of big data can provide real and actionable solutions. The rapidly increasing supply of satellite data is a particularly huge opportunity. Every team came up with a solution that could achieve significant reductions for the Toronto region and we look forward to working with the City of Toronto and other municipalities to see if they can be implemented.”
Say hello to some of the teams crunching big data to hack #Toronto‘s transport emissions during the #Climathon! <img src="https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/2/72x72/1f4e1.png" alt="