Digital Citizens Romania was honoured to join the jury of the 3rd edition of the EU Datathon, on 13 June 2019 with the final in Brussels, where 12 teams pitched their skills and ideas against each other to win 3 different challenges.
The challenge for the 12 finalists (selected from 99 entries across Europe) was to develop apps that offer new services or insights, using data made available by the EU institutions. The competition was organised by the EU’s Publications Office, in partnership with the Romanian Presidency of the EU Council.
The 3 winning teams were awarded € 15,000 each. The runners-up in each challenge won € 7,000 and the third placed teams € 3,000.
The winning team in challenge 1 – ‘Innovative ideas through EU open data’ – was ‘The Smartfiles Network’, from Austria. This team won over the judges by making EU and national court rulings accessible from any PDF, helping people to understand the evolution and connectedness of case law. ‘Euromaps’ (from Belgium) won the second prize, ‘Politicindex’ (from Germany) won third prize and ‘EY/EU Funds predictive forecasting impact analytics’ (from Italy) won the fourth prize.
The winning team in challenge 2 – ‘New insights into economics and finance’ – was ‘EconCartography: Economic Cartography for the European Union’, from Italy. This team provides intuitive and interactive visualisations to explore the complex landscape of the EU economy. The second place went to the Finnish team ‘Investment Info’. The French team ‘Bizmap’ came in third place and the Spanish team ‘EnvyRState’ came in fourth place.
The winning team in challenge 3 – ‘Tackling climate change’ – was ‘Chloe Irrigation Systems’, from Greece. This team created a promising platform which monitors and optimises irrigation to reduce water waste and cost, while increasing crop yield. ‘The Blue Time Machine (BTM)’ (from Spain) won the second prize, ‘MindYourFoot’ (from Belgium) won third prize and ‘ODCCI (Open Data Climate Change Insights)’ (from Germany) won forth prize.