Hackers Take on the Planet

The two top entries in the first Stockholm Green Hackathon, held over the weekend of October 21st and 22nd in the R1 Reactor Hall, show gamers and Web users how everyday activities contribute to carbon dioxide emissions.

Bringing together more than 30 participants, the Green Hackathon was designed to put creative minds to work spotlighting solutions to environmental threats. Eleven teams of coders spent the weekend 25 metres underground in the Reactor Hall developing prototypes, Web services and mobile apps in pursuit of sustainability solutions. 

"A hack is a smart approach to get people to share ideas and get things done", said Bianca Sayan from Sourcemap, Inc., one of the participants. "The Green Hackathon was a great way to learn from other people about how environmental information can be used."

Organised by the KTH Centre for Sustainable (CESC), the Hackathon named two top entries: 

Remember Carbon is a Google Chrome browser extension that shows air travel shoppers how much greenhouse gas would be generated by each trip displayed in a list of available charter tours.

Carbon Emissions in Minecraft is an add-on to the wildly popular online game Minecraft, in which players find tools and materials in a virtual world that can be used to build any manner of fanciful structure. With AMEEconnect, actual climate data is pulled into the game to show the effect of, for instance, burning fuel or cutting down trees. As the carbon load increases, skies grow darker.

A complete list of participating hacks may be found on the Green Hackathon website:

Plans are already afoot to stage Hackathons in Helsinki and Boston together with CESC partners at EIT ICT Labs, MIT and Sourcemap.com.

Read more about the Centre for Sustainable :

Peter Händel wants you to make your mobile phone a part of the car’s dashboard. The KTH Professor of Signal Processing has helped create a new mobile application for safer and more efficient driving. “In the public debate, drivers are often warned about using a mobile phone while driving, but I say the opposite: your mobile phone should be seen as an extension of the car’s dashboard.”

The odyssey of dogs and dingoes from China to Polynesia and Australia can now be mapped. KTH genetic researchers Peter Savolainen and Mattias Oskarsson have presented a new study showing how the domestic dog accompanied humans across the islands of Southeast Asia.

The chief executives of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, U.S.A., and KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, have formally announced a long-term strategic alliance designed to benefit students and faculty at both institutions. The agreement on academic and research cooperation seeks to engage the civic communities and economic interests of both Sweden and the state of Illinois.