Barcelona air quality datathon

Coinciding with the exhibition “After the End of the World”, BCN Analytics, Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Eurecat’s Big Data CoE and Leitat, together with the CCCB, are organising this datathon with the intention of sensitising, generating awareness, interest, participation and innovation about the problems of pollution in cities, with the focus on the city of Barcelona.

Our intention is to bring together a community of multidisciplinary collaborative fields, involving scientists, data and big data analysts, statisticians and mathematicians, among others, who are concerned about the environment and interested in improving Barcelona’s air quality prediction system and how we understand it.

The result should help us to make better predictions, and to raise citizen awareness of the principal causes of atmospheric pollution in cities.

 

Objective and competencies:
The objective of this datathon is to calibrate a predictive air quality model using the data provided, which improves our understanding of our environment to help in decision-making.

 Based on the observation of air quality data collected at nine stations in the city of Barcelona, participants will have to make predictions about air quality on the following days.

Geographical area:
Barcelona city

Dataset:
The dataset contains information about the CALIOPE air quality forecast system (www.bsc.es/caliope) and observation data provided by the EIONET network (https://www.eionet.europa.eu/).

The number of entries is 2 * 365 * 24 * 7 * 2 = 245,280, covering 2014 and 2015, with the values of time, nitrogen dioxide (NO2), and seven stations in the city of Barcelona. 

Technical requirements:
Participants must bring their own work tools: laptops, other components of their products or solutions, and any other hardware or software they need.

The organisers of the datathon will provide Internet, tables, etc.

Registration:
You can take part individually or collectively, with groups of up to five persons, up to a maximum of 50 participants. The registration of multidisciplinary groups will be promoted. Participants will be selected for their profile.

Members who register individually will be able to join a team.

The teams must have a representative who will present the result obtained at the end, and who will also be the contact person with the organising committee.
 

There are two prizes:

Best Model:
To the team that builds the most precise model.

Exploration:
To the team that comes up with new ideas or new conclusions based on the data provided.

 

PROGRAMME

Saturday 20 January
The datathon will begin at 10:00 and end at 22:00, and take place in the Sala Raval at the CCCB. Food and drink will be provided for the participants.

Sunday 21 January
9:00 Welcome and breakfast
10:00 Presentation of the results by each of the teams (maximum 5 minutes per presentation + 5 minutes of questions)
11:45 – 12:30 Deliberation of the jury / Coffee break
12:30 – 13:15 Prize giving