BU Research Blog

Would you or your students like to join a multi-skilled team from academia and business to hack solutions to local issues affecting the ocean?

Join us at BU’s Ocean Hackathon, part of a global event across 14 locations worldwide that gives teams 48 hours to create solutions to local issues affecting the oceans. The Hackathon will begin late afternoon on Friday 17th November 2023, and conclude on Sunday 19th November 2023. The winning teams from each location will come together in Brest, France for the Grand Finale in December 2023.

We are currently seeking team members to take part, ‘hacking’ solutions to our local challenges. We’d be particularly grateful if academic colleagues can encourage their students at all levels to participate and stress how great it would look on their CVs. Anyone can join a team, including students, academics, and local businesses. Participants with expertise in sustainability, and/or skills in coding, AI, data analysis and business development are actively encouraged to join a team.

Six challenges have been set for Bournemouth teams to solve. They are:
• A mobile app designed to geo-tag data to track marine plastics and litter
• Monitoring coastal cliffs through the use of AI
• Predicting migration times of bats and birds across the English Channel from meteorological data
• Decoupling sewage ‘overflow’ spills from emerging contaminants in water courses
• The possibility for seaweed farms and wind farms to work together for sustainability
• An interactive tool for the identification of marine life.

Full details of the Bournemouth challenges can be found on the Ocean Hackathon website.

Registrants will be placed in multi-disciplinary teams with the expertise to be able to solve the challenges submitted. At the end of the Hackathon, a judging panel will crown the team with the best solution as winners, who will then go on to represent Bournemouth at the Grand Finale in Brest, France in December 2023.

Participating individuals must be available for the entirety of the Hackathon, which will take place in Bournemouth University’s Bournemouth Gateway Building, Lansdowne Campus. Food and drink will be provided throughout the weekend.

For more information about the event, and to register, visit the Ocean Hackathon website, or contact the Global Engagement Hub at globalbu@bournemouth.ac.uk.