The weekend ended with an awards ceremony, where the winners of main and secondary prizes of the 1st CASSINI Hackathon Estonia were announced by the international jury. The local winner - Project HIVE went to the CASSINI Hackathon Europe Finale to compete for the title of the cross- European CASSINI Hackathon winner.
The CASSINI Hackathons & Mentoring is a series of six hackathons that tackle global challenges with European space technologies. Each hackathon took place simultaneously across 10 different locations with a central hub in Belgium. Estonia was the cross-Baltic local hub welcoming participants from Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
The aim of the cross-European CASSINI Hackathon: Digitising Green Spaces
The initiative intends to make space technology more accessible and encourage the engagement of advancements of the space sector in the European entrepreneurial ecosystem. European space technologies can help access, understand and protect our nature in many different ways. From monitoring vegetation changes over time, developing ‘green’ indicators and optimal access routes, to forecasting air pollutants, UV indices, and park congestion - the options are countless.
The participants of the CASSINI Hackathon Estonia were designing products, devices, services, or environments that leverage European space data, information, and signals from Copernicus, Galileo, and EGNOS that tackle the following challenges :
🌳 protecting rural areas for wildlife and ecosystem conservation, ensuring healthy and resilient forests, and enabling the development of new green spaces and underdeveloped areas.
🌿 discovering your city by supporting urban planning and real estate development & valuations, discovering green factors contributing to residential life, and promoting ecological sustainability.
🌱 staying fit and healthy by mapping and accessing green spaces for outdoor activity, forecasting air pollutants such as pollen, nitrogen oxide, or particulate matter, understanding and monitoring UV exposure.
Teams formed at the CASSINI Hackathon Estonia had a chance to work on their prototypes with the industry-leading experts from Starship Technologies, Nortal, eAgronom, Montonio Finance, Tartu Observatory at the UT, EO59, Rexplorer, and many more.
By the end of the 48 hours, after long days and nights of hacking, mentoring sessions, and checkpoints, demos of the teams there made it to the final were presented for the final pitch.
The awesome teams that made it to the local final pitch were:
Project HIVE - an application supporting beehive monitoring through satellite data to improve management of the beehive ecosystem and tackle beehive depletion due to pollution.
Breath-in app - an application to fight seasonal allergies with data! A service that would show the most polluted areas in the neighborhood and alarm those with allergies about the possible threats.
Smart breathe - an application to check the quality of air. Detect the presence of harmful gases or viruses within the specified region.
Water kit - is a hardware-software solution to monitor the rate at which water is being consumed and help curb the wastage of water in society in order to save the limited resources and build more sustainable solutions. The solution uses satellite data to predict movement and shortage of water according to the area.
CASSINI Hackathon Estonia winners
OVERALL WINNER, went on to the finale to compete with 10 other local hub winners for the title of the cross-European CASSINI Hackathon winner on June 24th! The team also won tickets to sTARTUp Day 2021 and TUUL ride vouchers.
Project HIVE
2nd place direct pass to TOP-20 teams as part of the 6-month ClimAccelerator by Cleantech ForEs. Also, the team received 2000€ worth of mentoring from the core team of ESA BIC Estonia, along with one month of access to S2B Work Space by Tartu Teaduspark.
Breath-in app
You can watch both the FINAL DEMOS event HERE and the AWARDS CEREMONY recorded live HERE.
Who made CASSINI Hackathon Estonia possible
The event would not have been possible without the hard-working team of Garage48 visionaries and its partners.
Mentors:
Luciano Rocca - Associate Scientist at EO59
Helen Kokk - UX and Service Design Lead at Nortal
Robin Saluoks - CEO and Co-Founder of eAgronom
Tiit Liivik - Founding Engineer at Starship Technologies and CTO at Solaride
Alina Dolmate - Strategic Planner, Innovation and Sustainability
Alise Pizika - Head of EIT Climate - KIC Hub Latvia at RTU
Jana Saastamoinen - CMO at sTARTUp Days 2021
Ilya Bolkhovsky - CEO at Rexplorer
Mihkel Pajusalu - Head of Space Technology Department and Associate Professor in Space Technology in Tartu Observatory at the University of Tartu
Henrik Rank - Lead Developer at Montonio Finance
Partners: CleanTech ForEst, Tartu Science Park, ESA BIC Estonia, Tartu Observatory / Tartu University, Keskkonnaagentuur, Estonian Space Office, Riga Technical University Design Factory, EIT Climate-KIC HUB Latvia, Latvian Space Industry Association, Enterprise Estonia.
Organizers: Kadri Kõivik, Kadi Aguraijuja, Tamara Bezljudova
Hosts: Triin Preem, Kadri Kõivik
We are excited to be a part of the newborn initiative, paving the way for future solutions originated from the CASSINI Hackathons.
You can take a look at the 1st Hackathon Estonia Photo Album for exclusive behind-the-scenes content HERE.
Stay tuned for the next CASSINI Hackathons!
