Published on: 31.10.2022
Author: Alex Lavrynets
The Data Science Competence Center (DSCC) teamed up with the Federal Office of Information Technology, Systems and Telecommunication (FOITT) to propose the "Make Climate Change Tangible for Swiss Citizens" challenge for the 2022 edition of HackZurich, from 16 to 18 September. The challenge consisted in finding solutions to improve the public's interaction with climate data.
Climate change in Switzerland can be measured using data collected by MeteoSwiss. How this change will evolve in the future can also be estimated thanks to the Swiss Climate Change Scenarios from the National Centre for Climate Services (NCCS), published in 2018. Although these data are available, for the uninformed, accessing them remains difficult. To improve the data's accessibility, the "Make Climate Change Tangible for Swiss Citizens" challenge was organised together by the DSCC and the FOITT during the 2022 edition of HackZurich.
Altogether, 14 teams took up the challenge. All of the submissions led to reflections about climate change and how to make the most of climate data, the understanding of which is crucially important for the common good.
The “QuizzerLand” all-female hacker team won the challenge with its eponymous solution, developing a mobile application in less than 40 hours. QuizzerLand aims to inform users about the impact of climate change in Switzerland. The application is designed to be user-friendly and interactive and encourages the public to find out about the climate using official data. As an incentive, keen users will be able to take advantage of rewards to reduce their ecological footprint. Users can choose from discounts on public transport or fair trade gift vouchers.
The QuizzerLand application currently only exists as a minimum viable product (MVP) and is not available for free download to smartphones. However, the team have said they are keen to continue with its development.
Every year, HackZurich, Europe's biggest hackathon, brings together different stakeholders from the world of innovation. From 16 to 18 September 2022, more than 1300 hackers from around the world met up to take on 19 challenges. Solutions were shared via the "GitHub" platform to ensure better accessibility of the source code.
The DSCC's participation in HackZurich is part of its commitment of promoting data science for the public good. The Data Science Competence Center has been offering its data science services to the Swiss public administrations since 2021. The FOITT is one of the DSCC’s key partners in the provision of its services and the challenge was the perfect opportunity for the teams to join forces in this participatory co-creation.
Last update 31.10.2022
