Inspired by presentations on the 2030 Agenda (SDG Watch Austria) and current challenges  (City of Vienna), six interdisciplinary teams took on this difficult task,  September 19-21, 2022, at the Campus of the University of Vienna.

To inform the participants about possible funding for their projects, the aws talked about “founding, growing and internationalising”. Antje Enzi from UpLeveled guided through the event.
The teams were supported by experts from the UpLeveled, as well as from the City of Vienna and the University of Vienna in the technical implementation, review of data sets, creation of business plans and preparation of the pitch.
After ~48 hours of intensive work, the teams presented their results to the jury:

• Univ.-Prof. Dr. Ronald Maier, Vice-Rector for Digitalisation and Knowledge Transfer, University of Vienna
• Caroline Krecké, MA BSc, SDG Watch Austria / ÖKOBÜRO – Alliance of the Environmental Movement
• David Wittmann, BSc, Directors Office for Climate Governance, City of -    Vienna

„Vision_Vienna“

Climate Change is about to change our cities drastically. Temperatures in the city will rise to unbearable levels in the future. CO2 emissions will have to be reduced drastically. This means cars, which are extreme heat absorbers and CO2 polluters, will have to be reduced dramatically and plants and trees will have to be planted instead.

How do we get regular citizens on board for this much needed change?

How can we encourage citizens to get creative and envision their own future streets?

Vision_Vienna is a smartphone app that lets you "redesign" your street using augmented reality. It works like this: You start the app and point the camera of your smartphone or tablet on the street you want to redesign. On your screen you can then remove objects like cars and replace them with other objects like trees, benches, shrubs, bicycle stands, Grätzloasen, fountains, etc. You can immediately see how your "new" street would look like, save and share your street so that others can see your results as well. The app gives you instant feedback on how your changes would affect temperature, CO2 emissions, maintenance costs and quality of life.

This not only allows you to communicate needed change to citizens but also allows them to get creative themselves in a participatory way.

„Verkehr findet Stadt“ – Connecting Urban Traffic Planners With Citizens

Have you ever wished for a new bike lane in your Grätzl, but didn’t know who to contact? Do you actually know who to contact, but the process seems tedious and not worth the effort? With our communication platform “Verkehr findet Stadt” we solve these issues and let you be part of your Grätzl’s traffic infrastructure.

Including citizens in urban traffic and mobility planning is crucial to actually meet their needs. Building the green infrastructure they wish for increases the chances of citizens preferring greener modes of transport over cars. “Verkehr findet Stadt” bridges the communication gap between city and citizens by lowering the threshold for reporting problems, needs and wishes and giving the city the option to actually react to citizens’ requests.

The platform consists of a website on the city’s and an app on the citizen’s end. With three simple clicks citizens can report their location-based ideas for bike lanes, pedestrian areas and other green mobility infrastructure projects. They can also see other people’s ideas and give them a thumbs up if they agree. The city planners see all these suggestions, together with environmental data from external sources, such as heat, traffic flows and emissions. If they decide to start a new project, they publish information about the project together with questionnaires to gather feedback from the citizens, keeping them in the loop.

While our first prototype concentrates on traffic issues only, the pool of topics can easily be extended to other forms of (green) infrastructure, such as energy supply, making it’s an important step towards more sustainable Climate Grätzls.

 "Verkehr findet Stadt" presented their project at the #DIDAYS22 on 19 October 2022.

Green Hood

Green Hood is a mobile application that helps motivating employees within a company to save energy and resources. 

Our application uses various aspects of gamification, such as collecting coins with your in app team for every task one completes, digital badges for different achievements and a shop where the teams can exchange their coins for rewards. Our plan is to work with various charities and companies to create prizes for our exchange shop that would give back to organizations  working to fight climate change.

With our app we are looking to create better habits in the work place with the intention that these good habits will also trickle down into the employees private lives.

The coding club called "G:URL*s" for women and non-binary people and that we are searching for new members and are open for collaborations if anyone is interested.

Instagram:@gurls_coding_club or email: codingclubvienna@gmail.com.

Greentzl

Greentzl is an application to raise users' awareness for their energy consumption by offering a convenient way of tracking one's household (if a smartmeter is installed). Additionally, users are nudged into the direciton of a lower consumption by visualizing immediate effects of behaviours and introducing a networking system which motivates and creates a community feeling. Considering the current energy crisis and approaching Winter, Greentzl offers a quick and easy way to reduce the energy consumption across Vienna.

Light Pollution

This project wants to provide a framework of reducing light pollution and is particularly working on the effective measures, how to get more and more people to understand the harm of light pollution and take actions for a better light environment in private as well as public places.

Currently there are many scientifical researches on the urgence of light pollution and on solutions to prevent it. Some public organizations have made quite an effort. However, compared to other environmental issues on air, soil and water, the society much less attentions is paid towards light pollution. We need to take action to improve the awareness of light pollution in the society.

In this project, based on the research, including the origins of light pollution and the general measures against light pollutions etc, we will analyze the current situation in Vienna and take some actions. If you are concerned, we could work together on the project, such as set up website and develop App, where views and experiences about light pollution and about reducing light pollutions could be shared, and so on.

NeighbourHood

NeighbourHood is a non profit app that aims at digitally assisting the local free exchange of (used) items (and services) and thus reduce our city’s ecological footprint. We help people to get rid of stuff that went out of use and simultaneously provide others with the stuff they want for free. This clever and easy way of reusing things reduces not only CO2 emissions, but all of the human impact on the ecosystem including issues like mining and waste.

Another aspect of our mission is ensuring a safe transition of goods. If a neighbour requests it, things can be exchanged by depositing them in local locker boxes, the ‘NeighbourHood stations’. In this way Neighbourhood is empowering also people who feel insecure meeting unknown persons. Of course the lockers can also be useful if you and your exchange partner don’t manage to find a common date to meet.

On the long run, the app will create a local community with additional features like a forum and a news channel, and maybe other functionalities that turn out to be wanted by the community.

You all know Robin Hood, the famous rebel ranging the Sherwood forest, who ‘stole from the rich to give it to the poor’. Neighbourhood is the rebellion against a waste culture burning through earths ressources at an ever increasing pace. We aim to take the stuff out of use and give it to those in need. This is fun, but its not just for fun. Its about saving at least a fraction of this planets biocapacity for future generations.

What happened after the Hackathon?

Two teams from the Hackathon 2022 "Digital solutions for societal challenges - Vienna Climate Challenge" , "Vision Vienna", renamed to "Re-Leaf" and "Verkehr findet Stadt"were invited by the City of Vienna to present the digital prototypes they developed in this ~48 hours event in front of people from different municipal departments.

The pitch of the hackathon projects was an event within the framework of the "Hcchschulabkommen" (Higher Education Agreement), which aims to initiate co-creative processes between the City of Vienna and the universities and to present knowledge from the universities to the municipal departments in a low-threshold manner. 

The Hackathon was organised by the University of Vienna together with the City of Vienna, enriched by the cooperation with Upleveled, SDG Watch Austria, Digital City.Wien and aws (Austria Wirtschaftsservice)

Specific as well as open challenges around the topics of climate have been defined by the city of Vienna, find them here.