Over the weekend, the capital city hosted the 5th edition of the Bratislava Climathon – the largest urban hackathon in Slovakia, where dozens of enterprising enthusiasts and innovators worked on solutions that can help Bratislava mitigate the effects of climate change and improve the lives of Bratislavans. Together, 150 innovators and experts from the city proposed a total of 22 solutions. The winners devised a way to give thousands of books a new life.
The Not a Candy Shop team, which won first place and at the same time a financial reward of 5,000 euros, came up with a complex solution for sorting out tens of thousands of old books that have been collected from citizens by the Bratislava KOLO reuse center. The jury also highly praised the team of high school students called InoCrew, which invented a way to present urban climate data in a comprehensible way for future generations.
The youngest participant of Climatethon Bratislava was 15 years old, while the average age was 22. According to the organizers, more high school students in the current year, as well as their increased interest in climate topics, is a positive sign. “They were often ahead of their older colleagues with their enthusiasm and showed during the weekend that they had been preparing ideas for how to change their city for the better for weeks in advance. We are very happy to see this enthusiasm in the young generation,” pointed out Eva Šimeková from the consulting company Civitta, which co-organizes Climathon.
Employees of the municipality and city enterprises accompanied the participants in the search for solutions. According to Mária Kosticka, head of the innovation development department, they made sure that each topic at the Climathon was also assigned experts from city enterprises and municipal departments as owners of individual challenges or mentors(HM1) : „ZThroughout the weekend, representatives of the city provided the teams with professional expertise and mentoring and were already actively thinking about how they can successfully translate the winning ideas into practice..”
The Bratislava Climathon is part of a global initiative and is organized by 140 cities in a total of 56 countries. In Europe, it is covered by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT Urban Mobility and EIT Climate KIC). According to Uwe Nagel from Swiss Re, which is the main partner of the event, the quality of Climathon keeps getting better. “Climathon has developed into an institution that is perceived by the most important city representatives. Every year we attract more teams, more better solutions and overall improve this format.””The biggest benefit of Climathon for Bratislava is the support of creativity and cooperation in finding innovative solutions to climate challenges, inspiring young people to actively contribute to a more sustainable and greener future of our city Bratislava .” Michal Weiss from the company IBL Software Engineering, which is another long-term partner of the event, joins us.
List of winners of Climathon Bratislava 2024:
1st Place – Financial reward of 5,000 euros:
Not a Candy Shop
An application that gives books a second chance through efficient sorting and rating.
2nd Place – Financial reward of 3,000 euros:
Puckwell
An application for citizens to help determine where new container stands can be placed.
3rd place – Financial reward of 2,000 euros:
Green Weather
Software that will help Bratislava plant thousands of trees faster.
Price for high school students:
InoCrew
A high school team that transforms the complex climatic data of the city of Bratislava into tangible data for the next generation.
(HM1)departments of the municipality
Source: www.nextech.sk
