On the 16th and 17th of March at the premises of Inkubator Starter in Gdańsk the Maritime EOvation hackathon was held.
The conducted workshop was the third – and last hackathon – conducted within the EO Climlab project in Gdańsk. The event was organized by the Blue Dot Solutions company and co-organized by the Satbałtyk consortium. The partners of the event were Inkubator Starter – the host of the event, Black Pearls VC, Kosmonauta.net website and Nauka o Klimacie (Knowledge about Climate) webservice. The event was also under the patronage of the Committee of Marine Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences.
Konstelacja project team / Maciej Roszkowski
During the 24 hours long workshop the participants worked on an application or service concept related to one of the challenges proposed by the organisers. The main theme linking all ideas was the topic of climate change in the Baltic Sea area.
The participants were provided access to satellite datasets. It was also possible to download and analyse data on the Satbałtyk platform, which was presented by Marta Konik from the Institute of Oceanology. During the workshop, the participants had the opportunity to listen to two presentations. The first was presented by dr Aleksandra Kardaś (Nauka o Klimacie) on climate change issues in the Baltic Region. In the second lecture by dr hab. Mirosława Ostrowska, leader of the SatBałtyk project, presented issues related to remote sensing and satellite observations of the Baltic Sea area.
The teams
During the event three teams were created:
- Fish-Slayer proposed an application, which allowed to show fishing areas by analysing plankton occurrence. This solution can also grant results by showing areas where more fish can be caught.
- The Konstelacja (Constellation) team proposed a concept of securing sea shores. The application would be used by entities, that wish to reduce the deterioration of shores by covering them with plants..
- The Plankton Masters is a team that focused on monitoring plankton formation. The team is covering the issue of plankton overpopulation on certain areas.
Plankton Masters complete their presentation in front of the jury / Maciej Roszkowski
During the second day of the event the participants linked by teleconference to the Eovation City and Climate hackathon, which was organized in parallel in the Czech city of Brno.
Later in the evening the participants presented their ideas in front of our distinguished jury, that assessed their ideas based on the following criteria: satellite data usage, climate change relevance and business idea. The main award – a voucher for 2 000 EUR for the purchase of commercial satellite data and a place in the coworking space at the Inkubator Starter was awarded to the Fish-Slayer team.
All participants got presented with the opportunity of additional consultations regarding their ideas, granted by Black Pearls VC, Satbałtyk and Blue Dot Solutions experts. Electronic sets of Arduinos, laser PM2.5 and humidity sensors and portable solar panels were also given as awards.
“Hackathons are usually the first steps for future entrepreneurs. On such events they can work on their first, more advanced concept and also learn more of the possibilities given by satellite data. On such events they gain their first experiences, which in the future can turn into the creation of new companies and services”, says dr Michał Moroz from Blue Dot Solutions, MAIN event organiser.
EO Climlab
The EO ClimLab project commissioned by the European Space Agency is taking place in Poland, the Czech Republic and Romania since November 2016. Its aim is to utilise satellite data to create new climate change resilience solutions. A part of the project is the organisation of dedicated hackathon events called EOvations.
Within the project consortium the entities from Poland are as follows: Omnilogy, Blue Dot Solutions, Orange, Integrated Solutiona and Kapitech. On the Czech side : Czech Invest and SpaceSystems Czech and on the Romanian side: Arobs Transsilvania Software, Aries Transilvania and Indeco Soft.
