Bratislava Climathon 2021 finds feasible decarbonisation solutions

Behind the challenge is a global community working to speed up the transition to a zero-carbon, climate-resilient society

The vision of a resilient Bratislava – this was the assignment set for the Climathon 2021 event which took place in the Slovak capital on 22-24 October. The unique marathon of ideas involves 145 European cities in creating and implementing green solutions to fight climate change.

More than 120 participants and team members - from data analysts and programmers, to political scientists, designers and environmental experts – came up with ideas how to improve Bratislava’s urban infrastructure, create new services, and promote climate resilience within the 48-hour challenge. The result, according to the city government, was the emergence of real innovative solutions that will help the capital to take care of its residents and the environment in which they live.

Winning project examples

Sifting through so many bright ideas was not an easy task. Here are examples of winning projects that emerged from Climathon and will actually be implemented in practice:

• In the field of mobility, the winning KANthon team came up with the idea of ​​a comparator, which allows you to compare the travel time by car and via public transport in various city zones.

This is how Bratislava Chief Innovation Officer Petra Dzurovcinova describes this project: "They created a model to which new parameters can be added, such as how many people use the route, the number of transfers and so on. They helped us identify what data we should start collecting so that we could model individual road situations and show residents that replacing a car with public transport would pay off.”

• A team called Ecothusiasts created a tool to identify heat islands in different parts of the city based on several factors. As a result, the city can model, for example, how the temperature on a given street changes following the planting of trees.
• UnderBranc's solution streamlines waste collection by allowing residents to easily report that a garbage bin is full using an app.

What Climathon entails

Climathon is a city-based programme, supported by the European Union and created by EIT Climate-KIC, a global community of change makers and innovators working to speed up the transition to a zero-carbon, climate-resilient society. At the core of the programme is an ideathon organised by committed local actors - people who know their cities and climate challenges the best.