Join us for the 1st Climathon in Heidelberg 26.-27. Oct 2019

We are happy to share that GIScience Heidelberg/HeiGIT participate in the 1st Climathon in Heidelberg on Sat/Sun 26.-27. Oct 2019 at EMBL Heidelberg with a challenge on the following topic:

Boost bicycle usage through more attractive bicycle routes

Identify factors that make a bike route attractive and develop a prototype estimating these factors to facilitate bike route planning and navigation.

https://climathon.climate-kic.org/en/heidelberg

Global climate action movement

Climathon is a climate action movement with a climate-focused hackathon at its core. Climathon has grown to over 100 cities with a global reach in the millions.

First time in Heidelberg

Join the first Climathon in Heidelberg to connect with city officials, local enviromental organizations and businesses to develop your ideas for a carbon neutral city. Turn this vision into a reality by working together with developers, entrepreneurs, and students to find innovative city solutions. Experts and mentors will support your team during the 24 hours in finding the best solutions to the challenges.

Climathon pre-registration is still possible!

There are five interesting challenges to choose from! We are waiting for your creative ideas!

Challenge description by GIScience Heidelberg / HeiGIT:

Bicycle is one of the most environmentally friendly means of transportation. How can we support cyclists and make their trips more enjoyable, healthy and safe?

This challenge consists in identifying factors that make a bike route attractive and developing a prototype estimating these factors to facilitate bike route planning and navigation.

The fastest route might not be the most attractive for a cyclist. Traffic, noise, air pollution, dangerous situations, ugly architecture, crime, bad weather might be significant factors for avoiding a route. At the same time, scenic views, green areas, lakes and rivers, cafes and restaurants, beautiful neighbourhoods might make a bike ride more enjoyable.

The first navigation prototype meinGrün generating pleasant routes and focusing on the greenness, sociability, and quietness factors was developed by the Heidelberg University’s GIScience Research Group and will be tested soon. The prototype is based on the Open Source routing system OpenRouteService.org using OpenStreetMap data.

Often, the required data is not directly available, but has to be approximated. For example, for estimating the noise level meinGrün uses categories of streets and the number of lanes. The sentiment analysis of Twitter and Flickr data helps to find pleasant locations.

Challenge vision

In this challenge, identify attractiveness factors for cyclists. Develop a prototype solution to estimate these factors for a given route using any available data. Successful solutions can be then integrated into the meinGrün service.