URSA-MAJOR: URban Sustainability in Action: Multi-disciplinary Approach through Jointly Organized Research schools
Published March 4, 2025 | Version v1
Report Open

Sustainable City Development – Environmental Scenarios in the Global South - Report on the URSA MAJOR Hackathon 2024

Authors/Creators

  • 1. ROR icon Nansen Environmental Research Centre India
  • 2. Nansen Environmental Research Centre (India)
  • 3. ROR icon UiT The Arctic University of Norway
  • 4. ROR icon Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center
  • 5. ROR icon SINTEF Industry
  • 6. ROR icon University of Copenhagen
  • 7. ROR icon World Meteorological Organization

Contributors

Project leader:

  • 1. ROR icon Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center

Description

URSA MAJOR Hackathon on Sustainable City Development - Environmental Scenarios in the Global South was conducted during 11-15 November 2024 in Kochi, India, focusing on the themes:

  • Air Quality Monitoring & Modelling,
  • Remote Sensing of Environmental Status,
  • Barriers for Smart City Development (Social Science).

The vision of the hackathon was to promote sustainable city development with a special focus on environmental challenges in the Global South. The hackathon included four Technical Sessions, where scientific experts and practitioners provided lectures, initiated groupwork by the participants and final presentations by the participants. For each of the above themes research groups was established to work on small scale research projects (SSRPs) to be implemented as a part of the hackathon. The activities in each group were planned in three stages: Pre hackathon, Hackathon and Post hackathon activities.

Pre hackathon was conducted two weeks prior to the hackathon during which workflow was discussed online, and study materials were distributed. The participating young researchers were given training under expert guidance from national and international organizations, with Hands-on experience with urban environmental challenges, Exposure to multi-disciplinary research and an opportunity to contribute to urban sustainability and policy development. The small-scale research projects were prepared and given to participants to dive into focused research projects under expert guidance, simulating real-world challenges. It was planned in such a manner that they will gain practical research experience, contribute solutions to urban issues, collaborate with international experts and other participants, choose a topic that aligns with their interests, work alongside like-minded peers, engage in research and prototype solutions and finally showcase the findings and solutions to a panel of experts.

There was a total of 22 young researcher participants from research institutions, universities and companies in India and abroad. Each group was working under the guidance of a group of national and international experts. Team air quality worked on the SSRP ‘Assessing Urban Growth and its impacts on Surface Urban Heat Island in the Kochi City, Kerala’, the Remote sensing group worked on ‘Assessing Urban Air Quality: A Comparative Study of Pollutant Trends in Delhi and Kochi (2019-2023)’ and the social science group worked on ‘Analyzing Kochi’s SMART city initiatives its challenges and solutions’.

Post hackathon all three student groups have been working on producing publishable output reports and results of their research findings and studies (Section 8). Built on this report also a final policy summary report of the hackathon will be submitted to the local state authorities for their planning further along these lines. Research results from the hackathon will be assessed for peer review publication among the participants.

Technical info (English)

 

The structure of the report

This report starts with an Introduction (Section 1), followed by a brief overview of the hackathon event. A summary of the Keynote address Toward Environmental- & Climate-Smart, Resilient & Sustainable Cities: UN and WMO Integrated Strategy, Methodology, and Tools – Global South Focus by Professor Alexander Baklanov, is given in Section 3. Section 4 summarizes The urban hackathon: Ideas and expected outcomes - an introductory talk given by Professor Igor Ezau. Sections 5 to 7 summarizes all the expert presentations given in three plenary thematical technical sessions focusing on:

  • Technical session 1: Air quality monitoring and modeling (Day 1 and 2)
  • Technical Session 2: Remote sensing of the environmental status (Day 3)
  • Technical Session 3: Barriers for Smart City Development - Social science (Day 4)

Section 8 include the three reports from each of the research group projects, completed by the student and expert participants. conclusions and next steps following the hackathon The contents of each section are the responsibility of their respective participants and authors, as listed.

 

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URSA-MAJOR-SustainableCityDevelopmentHackathon_2024_NERSCreport#466.pdf

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