The thematic questions that the participants sought to answer at the EnCLOD Open Data Hackathon held at the University of Debrecen’s Innovation Center included the following: What is the relationship between traffic flowing into the industrial parks and the extent of utilization of public transportation serving these areas? To what extent do the stops in the city of Debrecen meet the requirements of the passengers for comfort, safety and accessibility? What kind of traffic management measures would help to encourage the choice of public transportation over car use in Debrecen?
There were local high school students as well as Hungarian and international university students enrolled in programs in informatics, technical, engineering, health and life sciences and economics at the University of Debrecen, as well as teams from Eszterházy Károly University in Eger, participating in the hackathon to tackle to the challenges of urban public transportation with the help of inspiring ideas, while DKV Debreceni Közlekedési Zrt. provided the necessary data on the entire city to the competitors, who were also assisted by expert mentors in their efforts to solve the tasks.
- Our expectations were exceeded by the actual number of participants, while the successful collaboration with the Innovation Ecosystem Center also proved fruitful. It was indeed stunning to see how these relatively small teams with a variety of backgrounds, using open data and artificial intelligence, were able to achieve remarkable solutions and results in less than twenty-four hours, some of which could even be adapted for other cities as well. We are also pleased that we were not only able to announce winners, but that there was even a team that we plan to contact in the future in order to develop and elaborate their ideas in greater detail- said László Mátyus, Director of Innovation and Service Development at DKV Debreceni Közlekedési Zrt.
The six teams that made it to the finals optimized night-time public transportation to industrial parks, designed traffic light operation based on real-time traffic data, coordinated traffic with public transit to eliminate service delays by using Árpád Square as an example, designed a community-driven app for improving the quality of bus stops and developed a city-wide traffic model that is even capable of making predictions.
The name of the winning team of the hackathon was Yet Another Effort to Enjoy Life, and it was composed of students of the engineering and informatics programs at the University of Debrecen, whose revolutionary idea was about introducing modular and customizable bus stops. “Bus stops are not merely places for boarding and alighting from vehicles; they can contribute to inclusivity and social cohesion as well as promoting urban sustainability,” claimed Aboubakary Said Kimiro, Karel Gabriell Hasian Siahaan, Toby Purbojo and Moses Kyeba Kandu in their winning project.
In addition to the prizes for the top three teams, the jury also awarded a special prize to the team called The Strategists for their design of a passenger information system that visualizes the coordination of local and inter-city routes. This design was created by a team of students from Medgyessy Ferenc Secondary School of Art and Technology, comprising Anna Román-Szőllősi, Sára Nucz and Dorina Elek.
The hackathon event was supported with co-funding provided by the EnCLOD project and Interreg Central Europe.
SzL