Fourth Edition of HackForGood Celebrated in Spain

Barcelona (E), May 2016 - HackForGood is an event structured around challenges or social innovation projects called "Retos" (challenges). Any individual or association that detects a social problem that can be solved by the use of technology can propose a challenge and will receive the necessary help to find a group of hackers to work on the initiative during the Hackathon.

In 2016, the challenges at HackForGood focused on the massive use of data generated in the digital era (big data) in order to develop applications and services that help improve people’s lives.

The fourth edition gathered over 1,000 social hackers who developed more than 120 applications to address some of the 300 proposed challenges, the goal of which is to help build a better world. During the event, the HackForGood Barcelona, HackForGood GLOBAL, and Global Thematic HackforGood Award winners were announced.

For three days, several hackathons were simultaneously held in Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Alicante, Murcia, Ciudad Real, Sevilla, Malaga, Las Palmas, Cáceres, Salamanca, Valladolid, Leon, and Vigo. The Barcelona hackathon was co-organized by the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) and the Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) in the Movistar Mobile World Centre.

In Barcelona, one of the most important challenges - driven by the UOC - was working with data on the elderly. The goal of this challenge is to use different sources of information to visualize the situation and evolution of this cohort in a metropolis such as Barcelona.