Predicting the effects of climate change in the Alps between France and Italy from now until 2050 in order to develop sustainable and resilient strategies and to accompany citizens, businesses and institutions towards a new approach to the ‘Highlands’. This is the goal set by TELT and Open Data Playground (ODP) for the Alpine Climate Data Challenge, the Alpine climate hackathon launched on the occasion of the 10-year anniversary of the public promoter of the Lyon-Turin cross-border section.
The winners
Nicolò Quartararo, Alessandro Rem Picci, Filippo Volante, and Alessandro Zocchi, with team named GreenVengers are the winners of the international competition with the project “Tȇte-à-TELT: harnessing data and innovation for real environmental impact”. The jury rewarded the ability of the student team from La Sapienza to analyse data not only related to the climate change description, but also to the environment, fauna and biodiversity, involving the citizens and the local area through the development of smart apps.
Students, data and technology
Launched in February and now in its final phase, this hackathon sees 160 university and doctoral students to create predictive models and visualisation tools to anticipate the impact of climate change. Thanks to the potential of the Foundry-Palantir data analysis platform, participants were able to manage the entire project, from data integration to visualisation and the development of innovative solutions through Generative AI. In particular, the challenge was to use the main public sources of climatic and meteorological data (e.g. Copernicus, NOAA, Arpa Piemonte, Méteo France), leveraging artificial intelligence to hypothesise the evolution of key variables – such as temperature, precipitation, wind, humidity, atmospheric pressure, snow cover – and the possible future impact of climate change on both sides of the Alps.
The finalist projects
The teams of the 5 finalist projects developed interactive and practical solutions to tackle the task: detailed analysis and methodological reports, interactive dashboards, prototype software/app/video applications to provide useful and predictive information to local communities, climate maps, and papers to support scientific documentation.
Several interesting specificities emerged. In particular, among the projects presented there are climate models designed for the Susa and Maurienne valleys which aim to analyse local weather trends and predict future conditions through machine learning algorithms that allow to outline possible warming scenarios of the Alpine arc and possible environmental impacts on the areas analysed; the development of an app dedicated to environmental sustainability, designed to actively involve citizens, encouraging the adoption of ecological behaviour, providing daily updates, personalised targets and scientific insights; an avalanche forecasting project based on predictive models and machine learning techniques that suggests at the same time possible practical solutions for risk management, from reforestation to physical barriers, and personal safety tools for hikers and professionals.
Projects were evaluated by a scientific committee chaired by Adra President, Emanuela Girardi, together with TELT Railway Division and Deputy General Director for France, Lionel Gros. The winner was selected by a panel of judges led by meteorologist Andrea Giuliacci together with TELT Sustainable Development, Environment, Safety and Deputy General Director for Italy, Manuela Rocca.
