The Hack

We’ll be working with the North East of England Climate Coalition (NEECCo) who are focused on tackling the climate emergency, reversing ecological breakdown and delivering an urgent and just transition.

Background

NEECCo are developing a set of indicators to help understand if what we are doing is having the desired effect; if collectively and individually our changes in behaviours and consumption patterns are going the right way, fast enough.

The story so far …

NEECCo met with the National Innovation Centre for Data in late 2019 to initiate the work. Since then, NEECCo have worked to develop the approach, define the metrics and indicators, and identify existing data sources. It’s become clear that there are important gaps in the data and we are often dependent on proxies, however whilst we can expect new data sources and metrics to be developed, we should not wait but work openly with what is available, recognising that some metrics will change over time. So far, more than 100 individuals and organisations from the Tees Valley to Northumberland have informed the project. They are based in different sectors with diverse focuses, all contributing with their expertise towards becoming England’s greenest region.

What we aim to achieve

The intention for the hackathon is to help the region to create a console which will report progress against a variety of climate change indicators. While reflecting the central concern around reducing carbon use, it will take a holistic approach to include not only environmental impact, but also economic and social impact, and a measure of a just transition. Large numbers of open data sets (many of them pre-loaded) will be provided, and domain, data analytics and technology expertise will be available to assist attendees.

The Hack Challenges

The challenges we will be hacking against are:

1. Building an underlying platform to gather, manage and analyse data

The platform needs to be capable of taking updated data from source with a minimum of manual intervention. The NICD team will take the lead on this task but other attendees are welcome to join.

2. Building a console to display relevant information

How can we best display climate change information so as to engage the public and our decision makers. The NICD team will take the lead on this task but other attendees are welcome to join.

3. Green jobs

There is much talk about the green economy and how investing in technologies intended to ameliorate or even help reverse the impacts of climate change will create ‘green jobs’. What is a ‘green job’ and how can we measure it?

4. Fuel poverty

There were 3.2 M ‘fuel poor’ households in England in 2019 and the recent increases in gas prices are likely to impact many thousands of North-East elderly and low-income households. How can we identify ‘fuel poverty’ and how big a problem is it for our region?

5. How ‘green’ is our region?

How can we compare regions across the UK to identify those failing to do enough and draw this to the attention of their electorates? What are the key measures we should use and how can we visually communicate this concept of ‘greenness’?

6. Defra data platform.

This new platform (https://environment.data.gov.uk/) provides lots of environmental data. Can we utilise that to paint a regional picture?

7. Energy generation

Is this region behind or ahead of others e.g. number of wind turbines, green power generated, community energy?

Hack Teams

To help us form the Hack teams, please choose your preferred challenge from the above list and let us know when you register.

If none of the above challenges appeal to you, you can let us know on the registration form which general topic from the four below that is most of interest to you and we will engage with you directly to try to create a challenge tailored to you and like-minded individuals.

General Topics:

1. Natural Capital

2. Economic Impact

3. Social Impact

4. A Just Transition

Registrations are closed

Data vs Climate Change Hackathon