Some 60 participants took part in the Datathon on air quality in the city of Barcelona, held on 20 and 21 January organised by Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), CCCB, BcnAnalytics, Big Data CoE d'Eurecat and Leitat.
Scientists, data analysts, statisticians and mathematicians concerned about the environment met at the CCCB to improve the system for predicting air quality in Barcelona, as well as its understanding.
12 teams participated, which used a data set with information on the forecasting system CALIOPE developed at BSC (www.bsc.es/caliope) and observation data of the EIONET network (www.eionet.europa.eu) on the levels of nitrogen dioxide in different stations of Barcelona during the years 2014 and 2015.
The prize in the category "Accuracy" was for the team "Worthless without coffee" and the prize in the category "Creativity" was achieved ex aequo between the teams "Alpha" and "Dreamers". Finally, "Alpha" was awarded for its contribution to the critical analysis of the CALIOPE forecasts and "Dreamers" for its integrated view of the problem and the recommendations addressed to air quality policy makers.
Among the members of the jury were the BSC researchers from the Earth Sciences department Carlos Pérez García-Pando, Kim Serradell and María Teresa Pay. The director of the department, Francisco J. Doblas-Reyes, was in charge of delivering the prizes.
According to the BSC researchers, this Datathon has provided a set of tools that allows improving the predictions of NO2 episodes in Barcelona. In addition, it has highlighted the need to test the effectiveness of current pollution protocols aimed at air quality policy makers.
Further information here.
