Shaya van Houdt works in the Environmental Accounts team at CBS and studied Ecology and Nature management. She also studied Conservation Management of African Ecosystems at the University of Glasgow. Van Houdt has conducted research in the United Kingdom and in Africa, and has been working at CBS since March 2023. This was the first time she had taken part in a hackathon event. What did she and her team do to prepare? ‘We didn't know what task we’d be given beforehand, but we did hold brainstorming sessions on how we might tackle it. We arrived in Brussels on Thursday 6 March and watched a presentation explaining the challenge. We were asked to create a dashboard – either for an existing statistic or a completely new one – using satellite data. We chose to focus on improving an existing statistic from the European Environment Agency.’
A range of expertise
Chris Lam was also part of the team that represented CBS at the European Hackathon. He studied Computer Science and Engineering at TU Eindhoven. After completing an internship in the Department of Methodology at CBS Heerlen, he successfully applied to work in the same department. ‘My work mainly involves the innovative use of ICT and artificial intelligence in statistical processes, such as for primary data collection.’ For Lam, this was also his first experience of a hackathon. ‘We had a great team. Everybody has their own area of expertise, and prior to the hackathon we shared out the tasks accordingly. That worked very well. We spent the first two days brainstorming and trying out ideas, from 8 in the morning until 2 at night. But it turned out that our idea already existed. So we had to come up with a new concept very quickly.’
Athithya Loganathan comes from India originally. After completing his Master's degree in Geoinformation Science and Earth Observation at TU Twente, he joined CBS’s Region and Space team in January 2023. There, he works on the Basic Geographic Registry and is involved in GEOS-funded statistics projects aimed at automating the creation of land use maps. He has extensive experience of hackathons. ‘I’ve already participated in quite a number, including the NASA hackathon and the Copernicus hackathon. I love the idea of brainstorming on issues that our society faces and coming up with solutions. The question is: how can we utilise data to make better policy?’
The Air Inequity Dashboard
During the European Hackathon, Loganathan and his two colleagues from the Netherlands and Slovenia looked at the relationship between air pollution and certain socioeconomic indicators. ‘For example, using data from the TROPOMI sensor on board the Copernicus Sentinel-5P satellite, we mapped air pollution in our country and in Slovenia. We also used gross domestic product (GDP) figures for the ‘NUTS 3’ regions [editor’s note: NUTS 3 is a European regional classification which corresponds to the 40 COROP areas in the Netherlands]. We wanted to see if there was a relationship between air quality and wealth. The question here was: do regions with higher GDP per capita have better air quality and vice versa? We wanted to present this relationship in a dashboard, called the Air Inequity Dashboard.'
Impact of air pollution is unevenly distributed
The Air Inequity Dashboard shows the uneven impact of air pollution on populations, such as health indicators by region. Van Houdt: 'Air pollution is an invisible threat. What we discovered is that it affects not just the environment and nature, but that it’s also a social problem. Despite a range of measures taken within the European Union to achieve cleaner air and fairer distribution of the disadvantages, such as the Zero Pollution Action Plan 2030, we still see that lower-income populations are disproportionately affected. They are more likely to live near industrial areas or busy roads, for instance. This means that their health suffers more.
Innovative, high-quality entries
A total of 28 teams participated in Eurostat's Hackathon. The standard was high and the entries highly innovative. The independent jury for the European Hackathon was very impressed with the performance of the CBS team. Lam: ‘The work was judged on five criteria: relevance to specific policy goals, methodological clarity, innovative approach, replicability and communication. We had the highest score in all these areas. That meant that we were awarded first prize. The CBS team was pleasantly surprised by their victory – they had not been expecting it. As soon as they came back to the CBS offices in The Hague and Heerlen, it quickly became clear how impressive their performance had been. Lam: ‘Lots of colleagues wanted to congratulate us and there was cake too!’ Van Houdt and Loganathan were overwhelmed by all the compliments and messages from managers and colleagues.
