03 Jul Datathon 2019 Recap
This past weekend of June 28th-30th, this year’s Datathon took place at our very own Geekdom Event Centre. A total of 6 teams dedicated their weekend to creating and perfecting their ideas that could be used to fix city problems. This year’s topics focused on:
- Access to services: Consolidating and improving the accessibility and effectiveness of SmartSA services. Help us identify opportunities to combine existing services and create new ones.
- Affordability: As San Antonio grows, how can we ensure it stays affordable and accessible to everyone? Help us develop insight into San Antonio’s affordable housing challenges.
- Environmental quality: Preserving San Antonio’s environment is critical as our city continues to develop. Deep dive into the City’s water and air quality data to transform how we think about sustainability and environmental quality.
Friday night, teams checked-in and had a great kickoff to the weekend with various speakers from Google Cloud, Alamo Regional Data Alliance, and the City of San Antonio’s Office of Innovation. Saturday and Sunday were dedicated to each team working on their idea along with one on one sessions with various mentors from the City of San Antonio, CPS Energy, Edwards Aquifer Authority, San Antonio Water Systems, San Antonio River Authority, VIA Metropolitan Transit, San Antonio Housing Association, and The Pudding. In the latter half of Sunday, the teams presented to our panel of esteemed judges:
- Brian Dillard, Chief Innovation Officer at City of San Antonio:
- Kim Stoker, Sr. Director, Environmental Planning, Compliance & Sustainability at CPS Energy
- Sree Pulapaka, Vice President and Chief Information Officer at San Antonio Water Systems
- Steve Young, Vice President of Technology & Innovation at VIA Metropolitan Transit
- Felix Marquez, Executive Director of Administration and Financial Services at Edwards Aquifer Authority
- Charles Woodin, Chief Executive Officer at Geekdom
Not only was the Geekdom Event Centre full of people eager to see the final presentations, but the energy and eagerness to hear how citizen scientist in San Antonio can help make a difference from the public datasets given by the Smart SA Partners. The event itself was an overall success not only from the Smart SA judges and mentors perspectives but also the participants as they were able to work closely with municipalities and utilities in capacities that were extremely limited prior to Datathon.
Jellyfish
Frank DeVilbiss and Ronrong Wei, a husband and wife duo, were awarded “Most Insightful” for their idea of hi-resolution maps and forecasts of air quality in San Antonio. This will not only impact the health of San Antonio but impact the local climate and economy.
Ada One
Ednalyn De Dios, Sandy Graham, and Joseph Burton were awarded “Most Solvable” for their idea that focuses on sewer overflows from the San Antonio Water System’s dataset. They analyzed both SAWS and San Antonio River Authority’s datasets together and purposed an installation of various pipelines around the city. They are also recent graduates from Codeup’s Data Science Program.
Data Colab
Rene Gonzalez, Chris Lozano, Matt Vazquez, and Valerie Velez, were awarded the “Most Compelling” for their creation of a low-cost air quality sensors along with a real-time data analyzer that they themselves built using an Arduino kit as the main component to their creation.
Fun With 311
Tyler Werland, Gabrielle Atkinson, Jeffrey Hunt, and Jordan Tracey, were awarded “Crowd Favorite” for their idea that uses data from the City of San Antonio. They were also awarded “The Aqui Summit Award” presented by Edwards Aquifer Authority for having the most innovative solution and blowing the judges away with their presentation. This data includes 311 calls, city weather, police, and various other forms of data that will be set all in one dashboard where anyone can view this information.
Hooli
Artem Skitenko, Izzat Alsmadi, Harry Staley, David Velez, Josh Davenport, and Navin Matthew, were awarded “The Community Spark Award” presented by CPS Energy for their dashboard idea that will consist of information of gathered up data that will show various aspects regarding population growth around the city and where people are moving around.
Chargeup
Ivan Cisneros, Ryan Mosel, Alex Piskunov, Merced Gonzalez III, and Adalyn Sedano had the idea that focuses on a partnership with the City of San Antonio and CPS Energy that will aid them on putting a limit to the usage of electricity at once by charging electric cars.
All six teams gave it their best and it showed! We thank everyone who came to witness a grand night and hoped you enjoyed it as much as we did. If you are interested in participating in next years Datathon, visit Geekdom.com and be on the lookout for our next event!