Smart Dublin Air Quality Hackathon

Every year, the Open Data Engagement Fund is awarded to a number of community, government or education groups or to individuals working with open data. This year, Smart Dublin received an award under this fund to organise a hackathon using primarily air quality data in Dublin.

On Friday the 24th of February, Smart Dublin, an organisation founded by the four Dublin Local Authorities, partnered up with Google and Aclima, to launch a weekend- long Hackathon focused on improving air quality. It was the largest Air Quality Data Hack Ireland has ever seen. Air quality is a serious challenge facing our cities and one that not only affects the environment, but society as a whole. Over the last 16 months, equipped with Aclima’s air sensing platform, Google we able to collect over 50 million records at 5 million locations of street level air quality data for Dublin.

Over the 3 days of the Hackathon, more than 100 participants gathered in the Dublin Google Offices and spent the weekend hacking these 50 million measurements of air quality data collected as part of the ‘Google Air View Dublin’ project. The aim was for the participants, spread across 16 teams, to come up with ways to help tackle air pollution in Dublin, given the hyperlocal, rich open data collected. This open data is available to view on Google’s Environmental Insights Explorer and on Smart Dublin’s open data platform and by making this data accessible and open, we hope to see local government, businesses and the general public working collaboratively to improve air quality for Dublin.

The event was a great success, with teams coming up with innovative and imaginative solutions that could certainly help tackle air quality in Ireland. The participants of the Hackathon spent the 3 days sharing ideas and solutions with each other. They also had the chance to attend workshops and hear from some fantastic key note speakers with great experience in all areas such as the environment, health, technology and open data. The participants truly benefited from expert mentoring and networking opportunities at this Hackathon.   The participants were also mentored by a member of Derilinx staff, as part of their Green & Social commitment under the government’s framework for procurement of technical support.

At the end of the weekend it was ‘Team Phoenix’ who were awarded with first prize. They had developed a decision model to pinpoint the communities in Dublin who are most vulnerable to air pollution. The top three teams secured over €3,000 in prize funding to further develop their ideas. This prize money was funded by the Department of Public Expenditure, NDP Delivery, and Reform’s Open Data Engagement Fund. The event was a great success and we look forward to seeing the results of their work.

More information about the Hackathon and the event can be found at: https://airqualitydatahack.com/