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The city councils of Barcelona and the Japanese city of Kobe have launched a new edition of the World Data Viz Challenge 2019 Barcelona-Kobe, a data analysis and visualization contest. This contest was born last year, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the twinning agreement of both cities. The large number of participants and the quality of the works presented, which can be consulted here, have led the organizers to promote this new call.

What does it consist of?

The contest is held in parallel in the cities of Barcelona and Kobe. In both cities, participants will have to analyze data and generate visualizations in order to improve specific aspects of the city. In the case of Barcelona, ​​participants will have to use at least one data set from the Open Data BCN portal. Visualizations can be presented in the form of infographics, charts, interactive maps, etc.

Although visualizations of any theme related to the city are accepted, this year works related to the climatic emergency will receive special attention. In this way, the World Data Viz Challenge 2019 Barcelona-Kobe aligns with the Climate Plan, which integrates all the lines of action that the Barcelona City Council carries out in relation to this matter.

Who can participate?

Anyone who has the skills and abilities to work with open data, analyse and visualize them.

Participants can submit their projects individually or in teams, which should be made up of a maximum of three people.

How can you participate?

The deadline for submitting the projects ends October 31, 2019. Candidates must be submitted through this participation form.

How are the winners selected?

A jury formed by professionals specialized in data analysis and information technologies will review the works presented and will elect 6 finalists, whose name will be known on November 11, 2019. In parallel, another 6 finalists will also be selected in the city of Kobe.

All of them, among other benefits, will be awarded with a 3-DAY CONGRESS PAS ticket in addition to being able to present their work on November 19 in the framework of the Smart City Expo World Congress that will be held in Barcelona between 19 and 21.

For more information, you can check the participation conditions here.

Based on the idea that “the future reusers are, nowadays, in schools”, the Barcelona City Council organizes, once again, the Barcelona Dades Obertes Challenge, a contest with a high social impact whose main objective is to bring open data benefits closer to students and thus increase the number of people with open data knowledge and skills, taking advantage of all the benefits that entails. And it is aimed at the youngest citizens, from very soon.

What does it consist of?

The Barcelona Dades Obertes Challenge Third edition 2020 is a contest where students will have to develop real analysis and / or interpretation projects, using data sets from the Open Data BCN portal. It is intended that students apply their critical vision to suggest improvements that affect the city and the lives of its inhabitants, while discovering the potential of open data.

In addition to the Barcelona City Council, other organism that participate in the organization of the Barcelona Dades Obertes Challenge are: the Consorci d'Educació de Barcelona, ​​the Center for Specific Pedagogical Resources for Support to the Innovation and Educational Research (CESIRE) and Barcelona Activa S.A.

Who can participate?

The contest is aimed, mainly, at students from the 3rd and 4th grades of the E.S.O., and students from formative courses, prioritizing public funding centres. Participation takes place through their teachers, without restrictions by the subject they teach.

Teachers who wish can take part in a volunteer training program. There are currently 12 centers enrolled in this course, which includes training on general open data concepts, the Open Data BCN portal and tools for the treatment of data.

What is the deadline for submitting projects?

The deadline for submitting applications will open on February 17 and close on April 17, 2020.

Each centre will participate with only one project which will be evaluated by the jury of experts in the field. This jury will select a maximum of 10 projects from all the proposals received.

The students of the selected centers will have to defend their project before the jury in a final act that will be held on May 7, 2020, where the 3 finalists will be chosen.

Are you looking for inspiration? Discover the finalist projects of the 2 previous editions

The previous editions of the Barcelona Dades obertes Challenge were a success. 14 educational centers participated, more than 40 teachers and about 500 students who demonstrated their ability to acquire new knowledge and the educational opportunities offered by open data, presenting all projects of high quality and interest.

The first year, the winner was the Institut Ferran Tallada, with a work titled "Social cohesion goes by neighborhoods" that analyze social cohesion indexes (ICS) to measure and compare the city inequalities by districts. You can watch the video summary here.

The second year, the Institut Vila de Gràcia won the main award, thanks to the project “Gentrification in the neighborhoods in Barcelona”. This project showed the process of urban transformation caused by the phenomenon of gentrification, using datasets such as the number of inhabitants who leave their neighborhoods or the rent variation in € / m2. The projects of the EAT Institut Lluïsa Cura and the Institut Joan Brossa won a deserved second and third prize. You can watch the video summary here.

How can I participate?

The registration period is not yet open although the rules will be published shortly and then the call. From Barcelona City Council and datos.gob.es we will inform you of all the news that may arise.

You can follow all the information about the Barcelona Dades Obertes Challenge on twitter under the #OpenDataBCN hashtag.

A new edition of the Aporta Challenge is already underway. As the previous edition, new ideas and prototypes based on open data are sought to help improve the efficiency of a specific sector. In this case, the agri-food, forestry and rural sector have been chosen, due to its fundamental role in the creation of wealth and employment.

Why is the agri-food, forestry and rural sector important?

Currently, this sector is facing a series of challenges that affect all us and, ultimately, the future of humanity, such as climate change, food security, population growth or depopulation in rural areas. Generating a higher amount of food to support the whole population, in a safe way and respectful with the environment, looking for alternatives to the concentration of population into urban areas, driving the development of rural environment, as well as protecting and preserving the forests for future generations, are demanding and urgent tasks.

To these global problems, we must add the specific challenges of Spain. Depopulation, aging, desertification, digital divide, masculinization, deficit and dispersion of services ... are some of the concepts that usually come to mind when we think about the rural environment in our country.

A paradigm shift is necessary to face these challenges.

How can open data help to improve this situation?

The digital transformation can help to change the bases of agri-food operations, promoting the rural environment, in many different ways; for example, through the smart agriculture that combines technologies such as robotics and artificial intelligence with public and private data management, to maximize crop yields, increase productivity and improve their sustainability. In this context, open data has a fundamental role.

What is Aporta Challenge 2019?

Aporta Challenge seeks to promote talent, technical competence and creativity in the reuse of open data, with the aim of devising solutions that help promote improvements in the agri-food, forestry and rural sector.

The ideas and prototypes presented must use at least one source of open data generated by Public Administrations, whether national or international, and published under an open license. These data sets may be combined with others from various sources, both public or private, and national or international.

The contest will be developed in 2 phases:

• Phase I: Ideas competition. Participants must provide a detailed description of an original idea that can be used to create or enrich a service, study, web or mobile application, which leads to improvements for the agri-food, forestry and rural sector. All the ideas will be evaluated according to criteria such as: their innovative character, their economic and social impact, and their contribution to improving the life quality of young people and women, two fundamental groups for the sector survival. After the evaluation process, the 10 best ideas will be selected and their authors will go to Phase II.
• Phase II: Prototype development and face-to-face exposition. During Phase II, the authors of the 10 selected ideas will elaborate a prototype that may consist of simulations, visualizations, videos or multimedia solutions. The 3 best prototypes will be selected according to criteria such as ease-of-use or technical quality.

During the following months, dissemination and follow-up will be carried out.

Who can participate?

The Aporta Challenge is aimed at individuals and legal entities of the European Union.

Those interested in participating must register in this form.

What are the prizes?

The three best prototypes presented will opt for three monetary prizes according to the following amounts:

•     First prize: € 4,000
•     Second prize: € 3,000
•     Third prize: € 2,000

More information in the Challenge Aporta section and the Competitions Rules.

The government of the Canary Islands has initiated a project to address public policies on reconciliation and co-responsibility based on open data. Under the title of Open Data Canary Women, the objective is to raise awareness and improve gender equality, promoting the balance of work, family and leisure time, as well as the equitable distribution of public and private responsibilities between men and women.

This project consists of three actions:

1. Expedition:

The first phase, which took place in January 2019, consisted of a participatory event that brought together different profiles (both professionals and experts in the field and citizens interested in the subject) to explore and analyze the available data.

2. Visualization challenge:

The objective of this phase is to create a visualization based on open data that reflects a reality or problem for women equality, related to conciliation and co-responsibility. The visualization must include at least one dataset published by a public institution of the Canary Islands (Government of the Canary Islands, Istac, Cabildos, Town Councils, etc.). It should be noted that the submitted works must be under Creative Commons BY license.

​ Those who wish to participate must form groups of 3 to 5 people, where at least 50% of the participants are residents of the Canary Islands. It is not necessary to be an expert in data, because there will be free training related to data reuse and visualization and mentoring programs for participants who need it.

To participate it is necessary to register through the following form. The deadline for presentation of the visualizations is March 19. On March 21, the creators of each visualization will defend their work in front of a jury made up of experts. There will be simultaneous presentations in Tenerife and Gran Canaria.

3. Virtual exhibition:

The three best works will be exposed in the project Virtual Exhibition, a website that will serve to make public all the work done. In this way, they seek to bring the most relevant data to everyone who wants to consult them.

An increasing number of administrations are driving open data and its reuse through contests and hackathons. An example is Malaga City, which has just presented its I Open Data Reuse Contest.

The Data Portal of Malaga City has more than 1,800 available resources, grouped into 800 data sets, which follow the NTI classification. All of them have been published under a free use license, so that any citizen can analyse, reuse and redistribute data to generate a higher economic and social value.

With the aim of enhancing its use and boosting the generation of applications and value-added services, the city council has announced this contest, which has 4 categories:

• Best application for mobile devices
• Best web application
• Best chatbot
• Best analysis of historical data

This contest is one of the actions that the City Council is going to carry out in the framework of the II Open Administration Week, which will take place from March 11 to 17, 2019. The open Administration Week seeks to bring Public Administrations closer to the citizenship.

The call is open to any natural or legal person - except public administrations and those who have participated directly or indirectly in the call -. You only need a project that responds to any of the previous categories and meet the following requirements:

1. The project must be original, that is, not submitted to any other contest.
2. In addition, you must use at least one of the 800 data sets published in the Open Data Portal of Malaga City. The data set could be combined with other open or private data sources.

To help participants, a list has been created on YouTube with videos of interest. These videos show how to obtain information through an API or how to perform an analysis with Carto or Powerpivot.

Those interested in participating can submit their proposal until March 4, 2019 at 10:00 a.m. through this online form.

The winners will receive a cash prize of 500 euros per category. In addition, they will see how their work is promoted in the different official channels of the Malaga City Council and in the next DataBeers event, which will be held on March 27 during the GreenCities 2019 conference.

For more information, you can read the contest rules here.

Promote the use of open data in the European Union to generate new ideas, products and innovative services. That is the objective of EU Datathon, which this year celebrates its third edition, organized by the Publications Office and the presidency of the Council of the European Union.

The competition offers participants the opportunity to demonstrate their skills in data-related issues and show their ideas to the world. To do this, they will have to develop applications - web or mobile -, visualizations and insights that combine at least one data set produced by the EU institutions, agencies and bodies with other sources of public or private data.

There are 3 different categories, one horizontal challenge and two thematic challenges:

• Challenge 1: 'Innovative ideas through open data'. Participants should develop innovative ideas using open data from the EU. Specifically, they must use at least one data set from the EU Open Data Portal, and combine it with other open or not data sources.
• Challenge 2: 'New insights in economics and finance'. Participants will have to develop a new insight, business model or business concept through open data. To do this, they must work with at least one dataset from the European Central Bank, the European Commission's Directorate-General for Budget, the European Commission's Directorate-General for Economic and Finance, the European Investment Bank, the European Investment Fund or Eurostat, and combine it with other open or private data sources.
• Challenge 3: 'Tackling climate change'. Participants will have to develop a new business concept or business model to fight against climate change using open data. To do this, they will have to combine at least one dataset in the domain of climate change and environment from the EU Open Data Portal, with any other source (for example, the FAO or the European Environment Agency).

Those interested in participating have to register their project using this online form, before March 24, 2019.

Then, the evaluation process begins, which will consist of two phases: preselection and final selection.

• Pre-selection: an independent experts jury will evaluate the projects description,  and select a maximum of 4 teams for each category, based on its relevance to digital transformation in Europe and the potential of the proposed solution, among other factors.
• Final selection: The preselected teams will be invited to develop their application or visualization in almost two months. Then, they will have to present their proyect during the final conference, which will take place on June 13 in Brussels. In addition to its relevance, the applications will be evaluated against some criteria such as solutions scalability or its interoperability to other data sources.

As a prize, € 25,000 will be allocated for each challenge, which will be split in the following order:

• First prize:  EUR 15,000
• Second prize: EUR 7,000
• Third prize: EUR 3,000

For all those interested, the organizers have prepared a series of webinars, to detail the bases of the contest and show some data sources that can be used.

If you have an idea, do not hesitate to participate!

The Junta de Castilla y León has launched their third edition of the open data contest. Its objective is "to recognize the development of projects that use datasets from the Open Data portal of the Junta de Castilla y León". In short, it look for boosting open data and re-users community in Castilla y León.

On this occasion, 3 categories have been established:

1. Ideas Category: Ideas to create a study, service, website or application for mobile devices, using datasets from the Open Data portal of the Junta de Castilla y León. It give an opportunity to those people or entities that, without having the technical capacity, the resources or the time to implement a project with open data, do have the idea.
2. Products and Services Category: Projects that are accessible to all citizens via the internet through a url. These projects must consist of studies, services, websites or applications for mobile devices, using datasets from the Open Data portal of the Junta de Castilla y León.
3. Educational Resource Category: Creation of new and innovative open educational resources (published with Creative Commons licenses) using data sets from the Open Data portal of the Junta de Castilla y León to help teaching in the classroom.

A jury, made up of representatives of the Autonomous Administration and the sponsoring company, GMV, will choose the eight winners based on a series of criteria, such as its usefulness, originality or public value. Three prizes will be awarded to the Ideas Category, three to the Products and Services Category, and two to the Educational Resources Category made by educational centers. In the first two categories (Ideas and Products and Services) an award will be reserved for students enrolled in the courses 2017-2018 or 2018-2019.

The prizes will consist of an economic endowment (12,000 euros to be distributed) and individualized advice on business development, provided by the Business Development Area of the Institute for Business Competitiveness of Castilla y León (ICE):

1. Ideas Category: First prize: € 2,000 / Second prize: € 1,000 / Prize for students: € 1,000.
2. Products and Services Category: First prize: € 3,000 / Second prize: € 1,500 / Prize for students: € 2,000.
3. Educational Resource Category: First prize: 1,000 euros in technological material / Second prize: 500 euros in technological material.

The candidatures can be presented at the electronic headquarters of the Regional Government of Castilla y León: Open Data Contest of the Community of Castilla y León (2018). The contest is open to both natural and legal persons, with the exception of public administrations and those individuals or legal entities that have participated directly or indirectly in the call. The deadline to submit the projects is from December 21, 2018, to February 10, 2019.

In 2018, the cities of Barcelona and Kobe celebrate 25 years of twinning agreement, and to commemorate it, both municipalities have launched the World Data Viz Challenge 2018 Barcelona-Kobe.

Promoting policy improvements through data visualizations

A similar challenges have been launched in each city: participants will have to generate visualizations based on open data to show the challenges of an intelligent city, which can be useful to optimize public policies. In the case of Barcelona, it will be necessary to use at least one of the more than 440 datasets included in Open Data BCN. These datasets are classified into five major themes: city and services, territory, population, administration and economy and business.

A group of experts will select the 10 best datavizs or infographics. These datavizs will be presented at the Smart City Expo World Congress 2018, on November 14. This international event has been held in Barcelona since 2011, with the aim of promoting innovation and identifying opportunities to create smart cities that respond to the needs of citizens.

Pre-registration is open until October 26

Any citizen can participate. It is only necessary to have "the skills and capabilities to understand, analyze and visualize open data”

Those interested in joining the World Data Viz Challenge 2018 Barcelona-Kobe must pre-register before October 26, by filling out this form. The deadline to submit the visualizations will be from October 2 to November 2 through this other form. The works, which may be presented in Catalan, Spanish or English, must be carried out by a maximum of two people. You can consult the full terms of participation in this link.

With this challenge, the Barcelona City Council seeks to encourage the use of open data from smart cities and tools and techniques for analyzing data and visualizations. In addition, the contest will also serve to develop the critical thinking of citizens, who are a fundamental piece to promote policies that improve our environment.

The Barcelona’s city council organizes, for the second consecutive year, the Barcelona Dades Obertes Challenge, a contest aimed at promoting the knowledge and use of open data in the schools of Barcelona city. This year's edition is organized, like the previous year, with the collaboration of Consorci d'Educació de Barcelona and Centro de Recursos Pedagógicos Específicos de Soporte a la Innovación y la Recerca Educativa (CESIRE); and Barcelona Activa S.A. were added.

The contest is aimed at students who are preferentially in the 3rd and 4^th grades of ESO and from formative cycles, prioritizing public centers, through their teaching staff. By analyzing the environment, students will develop real projects that can help improve the city. With this objective, they must use the information published in the Open Data BCN website, which currently has more than 440 data sets on topics as diverse as housing, population, environment, accident, complaints, transport, culture and leisure, trade or science and technology, among others.

Every centre will participate only with one project. All proposals will be evaluated by leading university professors and professionals from open data world. The 10 projects with the best score will be presented at a public act, where students will have to defend their proposal in front of the jury and audience.

In addition, teachers from participating centers can enroll in a specific Training Plan about open data. The objective is to learn about data available in Open Data BCN and the analysis and visualization tools used for its treatment. In this way, teachers will be able to train and support the students to develop their projects.

The bases are already published and those centers that want to participate must fill the following document and make registration before October 1st. The students will develop the projects until the month of March. The final presentation act will take place on April 30, 2018.

Great success in the first edition

The first edition of the Barcelona Dades Obertes Challenge was held during the 2017-2018 academic year. The project, which was conceived as a pilot, was a great success, and this has led to this second edition.

The presented projects addressed various topics, such as the analysis of traffic accidents, the location of free wifi points or housing access. Although it was not easy to make a decision due to the high quality of all the works, the Institut Ferran Tallada won the first prize thanks to its project La cohesió social va per barris, where social cohesion indexes from different neighborhoods of the city were analysed, allowing a comparison of inequalities.

The award was a guided tour in the Media-TIC building, the hub of Barcelona's economic and innovation strategy, as well as a personalized data analysis workshop.

Open data as a training mechanism

With this initiative, Barcelona’s city council takes a step further in the introduction of knowledge and use of open data in the educational field, as other projects such as Escuelas Comciencia are also doing.

The use of open data in education allows students to work with real information, and understand what the actual results and benefits are on aspects that affect their daily activity, which contributes to foster critical thinking and citizen awareness. In this way, it contributes to develop their citizens’ spirit, and their implication in the social and economic reality that take place around them.

The Basque Government organizes two open data competitions with the help of the Provincial Councils of Álava, Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa and the city councils of Bilbao, Donostia-San Sebastián and Vitoria-Gasteiz. The objective is to promote the culture of reuse information generated by the local public administrations. For this reason, the projects must use at least one of the datasets belonging to the following catalogs: Open Data Euskadi, Gipuzkoa Irekia, Bilbao Open Data, Open Data Vitoria-Gasteiz, Open data of the City of Donostia-San Sebastián and Open Data Bizkaia.

The registration period begins on May 22th. You can register on the website of each of the contests, free of charge, until June 30.

Next, we tell you the main characteristic of each contests.

Ideas contest

The ideas contest seeks innovative ideas to create a service, study, web application or mobile application, using some of the aforementioned open datasets. The two best ideas will be awarded 4,000 and 2,000 euros respectively.

This contest is aimed at students, professionals, companies or organizations from all sectors. To participate, it is not necessary to have technical knowledge, but an idea of what could be achieved using open data.

Application contest

On the contrary, the application contest focuses on real projects that provide any type of service, study, web application or mobile application, using the open datasets previously indicated. In this case, the economic endowment is 8,000 euros, to be divided between the first and the second classified (5,000 and 3,000 respectively). Due to they are real projects, in this case programming knowledge will be necessary.

Both in the ideas contest and the applications contest, the projects will be selected based on a series of criteria, such as its usefulness - taking into account the magnitude of the problem it solves and the number of potential users -, its potential to generate business and obtain profitability, its social value or its innovative character, among other factors.

The commitment of the regional and local administrations in favor of the reuse of open data is driving an increasing number of meetings of this type, where technology and open data are combined to create solutions that add value to society.

Join in and participate!