Tech To The Rescue leads the way in innovative combatting the world's biggest "silent killer" - Air Pollution, with the Air Quality Hackathon (December 6-8, 2023). More than 190 tech teams worldwide answered the call to address the most pressing air pollution problems scouted by the world's leading non-profit organizations pioneering in fighting the issue in the most affected regions.
Building cutting-edge tech to fight air pollution
The impact of air pollution on global health is alarming, with a severe lack of reliable air quality measurements, monitoring, and data in many parts of the world. The consequences are dire, with toxic air linked to 6.7 million premature deaths worldwide each year, primarily affecting low- and middle-income areas, such as Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa (WHO).
In the latest Air Quality Hackathon more than 190 tech teams, with the help of more than 50 technical mentors, will use the latest cloud technology and Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools to bridge the data, forecasting, monitoring, and information gap with an ultimate goal to clean up the air.
"With the Air Quality Hackathon, we're taking another bold step towards harnessing the power of technology for systemic changes. Cultivating a positive impact doesn't have to come at an extra cost. At Tech To The Rescue, we're pioneering innovative pathways to unlock tech companies' potential and reshape our world for the better at the same time. Such engaging hackathons create opportunities to learn new technologies, maximize non-billable hours, and open new business and social possibilities".
Jacek Siadkowski, co-founder of Tech To The Rescue and organizer of the Hackathon
Technical needs of the vulnerable communities
The hackathon was preceded by the report and research conducted by Tech To The Rescue. The report's findings include more than 20 interviews with leading non-profit organizations in Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.
The organizations are facing a multitude of technological challenges related to air pollution. For example, air quality data collection, designing new sensors, creating open-source air quality databases, and crowdsourcing data. Also critical is building citizen awareness by developing user-friendly interfaces to display air quality data in an attractive and actionable manner. Additionally, supporting advocacy work by highlighting politicians' views on air quality and monitoring the impact of new policies on the environment, people, and the economy is crucial.
The challenges that call for tech solutions
Challenge 1: Sensor Resilience in Africa
· Sensors.AFRICA, an organization with the largest air quality sensor network in East-West and South Africa, faces challenges like downtime, data gaps, leaks, and cybersecurity threats. The challenge can be addressed with machine learning.
Challenge 2: Connecting Clean Air to Communities
· Smart Air Bangladesh aims to raise awareness about air pollution through an art and science exhibit but needs a tech solution to connect sensors to the display.
Challenge 3: Digitizing Clean Lungs
· Polish Smog Alert's physical art installation "Clean Lungs" needs digitization to transform art into awareness and reflect real-time air quality impacts globally.
Challenge 4: Bringing together legal jargon and public awareness
· Thailand Clean Air Network needs help explaining the positive impact of the proposed air quality legislation due to complex legal language. The organization wants to develop a tech solution to bridge the gap between legal jargon and people's lives.
Challenge 5: Unifying Sensor Data in West Africa
· Afri-SET aims to create a universal database solution to unite diverse sensor data in West Africa for accurate, corrected information.
Challenge 6: Empowering Indonesia's Youth for Clean Air Voting
· Bicara Udara aims to engage Indonesia's youth in the 2024 elections by showcasing candidates' views on air pollution and creating a user-friendly tech tool to empower them to vote for clean air.
Challenge 7: Estimating Air Pollution Emissions
· Finland's Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), operating in Europe, Asia, and North America, seeks help creating a model to estimate air pollution emissions using satellite data.
About Hackathon:
Air Quality Hackathon is an event organized in collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS). It aims to find innovative technical solutions for changemakers to solve the air pollution problem – considered a "silent killer." Air pollution is one of the most pressing health and environmental issues and most acutely affects South and Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa populations. Hackathon challenges are provided by the world's leading non-profits in these regions. Tech companies around the globe will form teams to compete throughout this three-day online event to work on solving critical issues relating to air quality. With technical mentors' help, participants will use the latest cloud technology and Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools to bridge the data, forecasting, monitoring, and information gap and support communities with Access to Clean Air.
About the Organizer:
Tech To The Rescue is a global program connecting technology companies with non-profits worldwide to solve the world's most pressing problems through technology. Since 2020, more than 1500 technology companies and 1400 non-profits have joined the #techforgood movement, and our team has enabled more than 550 pro-bono technology projects, which help boost the non-profits' impact.
About Amazon Web Services:
Since 2006, Amazon Web Services has been the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud. AWS has been continually expanding its services to support virtually any workload, and it now has more than 240 fully featured services for compute, storage, databases, networking, analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), mobile, security, hybrid, virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR), media, and application development, deployment, and management from 102 Availability Zones within 32 geographic regions, with announced plans for 15 more Availability Zones and five more AWS Regions in Canada, Germany, Malaysia, New Zealand, and Thailand. Millions of customers—including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies—trust AWS to power their infrastructure, become more agile, and lower costs. To learn more about AWS, visit aws.amazon.com.