By Roy Derks on 5 april 2021
At the end of March, we organized a public hackathon to create solutions to tackle climate challenges. After having done internal hackathons, we thought it was time to share our technologies with other innovative people and companies. Together with a group of partners, and enthusiastic participants, spend three full days of (remote) hacking with great results.
Climate change is one of the many pressing challenges our society is currently facing. At Vandebron, we want to continue finding ways to tackle this immense challenge. That’s why we decided to organize a 3-day GreenTech hackathon that ran from March 31st to April 2nd, 2021. We've been organizing internal hackathons for the past four years, to foster innovation within our company and allow our developers to work on something exciting without any constraints. If you want to read more about why we organize internal hackathons, you can find an article by our CTO here.
By organizing a public hackathon, we hoped to attract a bigger audience, possibly even outside our country, The Netherlands, and attract partners to work together with. We succeeded in both, and together with Hack the Planet and Top Dutch Solar Racing, we wanted to find technological solutions to problems in wildlife conservation and renewable energy. For these three days, all participants got the opportunity to work on challenges from our partners, access their technology and knowledge, and got the chance to win unique prizes. Also, we organized a free event with speakers Florian Dirkse (The Ocean Cleanup), Thijs Suijten (Hack the Planet) and Heleen Klinkert (Nieuw Groen).
The event started on March 31st, when all hackathon challenges were presented and the participants could select which challenge they wanted to work on. People from all over The Netherlands (and even beyond) signed up for the hackathon, ranging from students from the University of Amsterdam to young professionals looking for a job. The first challenge the participants could subscribe to was from Vandebron itself, where teams got the opportunity to use a selection of our Electronic Vehicle (EV) data. With this data, they could for example make a forecast on the amount of charging sessions we could expect on a typical day. Second, our partner Hack the Planet presented their challenge that was aimed at thinking of innovative solutions for their project Hack the Poacher. With Hack the Poacher, they install smart camera traps in African wildlife reservations to detect poachers. The teams could use their camera traps and data to create more solutions to map the poachers or use the camera traps for other needs. Finally, the students from Top Dutch Solar Racing presented a challenge to simulate the race they were supposed to join at the end of the year in Australia. Using their weather and traffic data, the teams could simulate the race and predict how much time they would need to complete the race. After selecting a challenge, all teams started the hackathon and participated in sessions to learn more about the challenges to get started.
All teams continued working on the hackathon challenge on the second day, after a nice warming-up quiz about climate change in the morning. For most teams this second day was when their project started to take shape, and they got a better idea about what they would be presenting on the final day. This second day was also an opportunity for non-technical people to get to know Vandebron and their partners better as we organized inspirational sessions with talks from different speakers in the afternoon. One of the co-founders from The Ocean Cleanup, Florian Dirkse, inspired us with his story behind making a difference in the world. After which, one of our hackathon partners Thijs Suijten, from Hack the Planet, demonstrated how technology can be used for the good. Our third, and final, speaker Heleen Klinkert (Nieuw Groen), showed how we can compensate for our CO2 emissions by storing them in the soil.
On the final day of the hackathon, all teams had to finalize their projects and create a presentation for the closing ceremony. During this ceremony, all participants and partners looked back at the past three days and shared what they had been working on during the hackathon. For every challenge, one team could win and take home several prizes, sponsored by Marie-Stella-Maris, EV Experience, and Klimaatroute. The first presentations were for the Vandebron challenge about EV forecasts. This challenge was won by not one but two teams as the jury and audience were so impressed by their solutions. Both teams created not only the forecast based on the sample data provided, but also created interactive dashboards. On the challenge for Hack the Planet, the team that won came up with a unique solution to use the camera traps to detect wild animals on the streets. For countries like India, this is a huge problem, as wild animals get stuck in traffic or walk through rural areas. The final winner of the hackathon was a group of students that simulated the Top Dutch Solar Racing trip through Australia and forecasted they could complete the race within 7 days.
I'd like to thank all the participants, prize/challenge partners, and speakers for their efforts during these days. The GreenTech Hackathon 2021 was a huge success thanks to everyone that has been involved. Keep following the vandebron.tech to be updated on future hackathons and events.