CASSINI Hackathon: Ireland Winners!

The Irish competition was judged by Chair Alan Gilitan, CTO and Head Researcher at partner Blackrock Castle Observatory; Bruce Hannah, CTO National Space Centre; Beth McLoughlin, technology journalist, HERE Technologies; and Sabrina Dent, Head of Marketing National Space Centre.

1st Place: Have Sea, Will Swim

Inspired by the huge rise in the number of people sea swimming in Ireland, this project prototyped an app that identifies swimming spots using geo-location and uses Eart Observation data to let people know about hazzards like shallow rocks. It also allows swimmers to input data on hazards like jellyfish and algae blooms. The plan for the project is to expand to a dashboard for councils to monitor congestion, amenity requirements, water quality and more at their local beaches.

Information | Video
Challenge: Staying Fit & Healthy
Team: Karl Byrne, Charlie Donnelly, Mairead McGrath, Laura O’Sullivan
Prize: €2500 plus a .earth domain and a year of MINIMUS hosting from Blacknight.

2nd & 3rd Place: GreenAttributes and Promenade

Our judges allotted equal points to teams Promenade and Green Attributes, who therefore unexpectedly tied for 2nd and 3rd place!

GreenAttributes uses Earth observation data to define the quality and attributes of green spaces, allowing urban planners, researchers, and industry to make better decisions. Promenade encourages people to stay active and enjoy the outdoors by building customised local routes based on the user’s inputs including wheelchair use.

GreenAttributes
Challenge: Discover Your City
Team: Marlène Boura, Cyrille Médard de Chardon, Paul Kilgarriff, Sylvain Klein
Prize: €1000 plus a .earth domain and a year of MINIMUS hosting from Blacknight.

Promenade
Challenge: Staying Fit & Healthy
Team: Caroline Pereira, Clarence Pereira, Ketlin Jennifer Philips, Priyanka Tandon
Prize: €1000 plus a .earth domain and a year of MINIMUS hosting from Blacknight.

Congratulations & Thank You!

Congratulations to all our teams, who worked so hard all weekend and delivered truly interesting, relevent responses to the Digitising Green Spaces challenge. We would also like to thank our partners MTU and BCO for helping with outreach for this hackathon, and Blacknight for sponsorship and promotion.

Our teams were aided by a series of workshops and mentoring sessions. Mary Carty led a key session on Green Business using real-world examples of space data use to help participants focus their ideas and ambitions. Dr Maire O Sullivan delivered a valuable hour on pitching to the judges, complete with a sample pitch deck for participants to use.