100 young people from civil society, IT community professionals, and technology enthusiasts will work in the next 48 hours at the Urban Mobility Hackathon to generate solutions for remodeling the public transport network in Chisinau.

The participants will work in teams, up to five people each, in one of the case studies provided by the organizers:

1. Crafting a dynamic map of bus/trolleybus stations distribution in one or more districts of the city, considering the current stations’ distribution, population density, people’s access to the transport services.
2. Revising the schedule, or replanning the routes for a bus or trolleybus route, to make it more efficient and accessible for the Chisinau inhabitants.
3. Estimation of the Chisinau population density based on mobility data.
4. Estimation of the passengers flows in public transport.

“Chișinău attracts an increasing number of residents but is not always prepared to adapt its infrastructure to the growing mobility demand. The city is confronted with one important challenge: lack of data on mobility and lack of a multilayered approach and analysis of the available data for testing new approaches and development of new solutions to old problems,” said Dima Al-Khatib, UNDP Moldova Resident Representative.

The 20 teams will have to solve one or more urban mobility problems in Chisinau, using the provided georeferenced data layers, and create an algorithm for analyzing and using the provided data. For the first time, various relevant data in Chisinau will be overlayered and analyzed:

• Human mobility – depersonalized mobility data of Orange subscribers during one working day and one weekend day.
• Public transport – the network of public transport routes, itinerary, and timetable for trolleybuses in Chisinau.
• Population and cadaster – data on the distribution of people in the city, on the land in Chisinau, residential buildings and public/social institutions.
• Land-use – changes in time of different Chisinau areas (occupying the land with residential areas, reducing the green spaces).

“Orange Systems supports and encourages everyone's involvement in finding practical and useful solutions for improving urban mobility conditions. Currently, cities in Europe can benefit from intelligent solutions that allow complex analysis of passengers’ behavior to improve public transport networks. We want through this event to identify and why not, to implement such a solution for the city of Chisinau. Analyzing the trends regarding big data, we consider that IT organizations must create the necessary conditions so that data analysts can experiment with this concept,” said Olga Surugiu, Orange Systems Director.

The teams will be guided by experienced mentors from the European Space Agency, Orange Systems, the United Nations Development Programme, and the Chisinau City Hall. Mentors will guide participants to analyze data layers and develop innovative solutions for a smart and citizen-centered city.

On October 27, the participating teams will present their projects and solutions to the panel. Three teams that have accumulated the highest score will receive prizes:

The “Urban Mobility Hackathon. Hack the traffic in Chisinau” is the result of an innovative partnership bringing together the United Nations Development Programme, the European Space Agency, Orange Systems, the Ministry of Data, the Chisinau City Hall, and the innovation laboratories Green City Lab and Milab.