Hack for UN Sustainable Development Goals in Odyssey 2020

This November, 105 selected teams will co-create new solutions to complex global challenges using blockchain, AI and other emergent technology. The best ones will get €200.000 in total cash rewards as well as pilot opportunities with governmental, corporate and non-profit challenge partners, to scale their solution after the event.

EDIT: Odyssey Hackathon was moved online and rebranded as Odyssey Momentum.

Your portal to the future

Odyssey provides a new space where everyone (and everything) can become part of a new solution to the challenges we face in the 21st century. These complex problems won't be solved by a single company, industry, or state. To address these issues, we need to build a new digital infrastructure and engage in mass collaboration.

The challenges have a global societal and economic impact, each of them tied directly to one or more UN Sustainable Development Goals. Teams will be able to impact a variety of industries and make their mark on the energy transition, conscious cities, critical infrastructure, logistics, public safety, nature conservation, real estate, healthcare, and digital identity.

The 2020 Odyssey challenges were contributed (among others) by: Vattenfall, VMware, DAML, City of The Hague, Enexis, KLM Cargo, TVM Insurance, the Dutch National Police, the Dutch Blockchain Coalition, the Dutch Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations, Grid Singularity, Engie, City of Groningen, UMCG, the Dutch Land Registry (Kadaster), the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the International Council for Environmental Law, and the Dutch Ministry of Defence. Highlights - Odyssey Hackathon (4th edition)

• Collaborate with governments, corporations, and non-profits, their stakeholders and end-users, and build a prototype solution in 48 hours.
• Get support from more than 300 experts (aka Jedi) on the spot, including legal advisers Loyens & Loeff and financial regulators: Dutch Central Bank and the Netherlands' Authority for the Financial Markets.
• Continue developing your solution after Momentum: all teams get access to ecosystems related to their challenge for further prototype development and pilot launch. To see which pilot opportunities are prepared for the teams, navigate to "What Happens with the Winner" section of each challenge page.

Since 2016, more than 230 prototypes have emerged from the program addressing the challenges of over 40 partners. Here's what some of the 2019 alumni teams have achieved: Space4Good signed a three-year project contract with the challenge lead to help protect 170.000 hectares of rainforest on Kalimantan; ChainMix continues working with the Dutch Chamber of Commerce to help it fight fake invoices with open data; VX Company was hired by the Dutch Kadaster to develop the mock-up of the Dutch national real estate database.

The challenges of Odyssey 2020

Balance the Grid (Vattenfall). Incentivize consumers to communicate energy demand and production to allow all stakeholders to balance the power grid. Co-create a fast and efficient digital power market commons to power an awesome fossil-free future within one generation.

Future-proof Infrastructure for Smart Meter Data (Vattenfall). Create a smart meter energy data exchange protocol, incentivizing all consumers and mandated stakeholders to contribute and use smart meter data, to support the future EU prosumer-driven energy market. 

Scalable and Inclusive Living Labs (City of The Hague). Build the admission system (onboarding mechanism) that automates access to a public digital ecosystem of The Hague. Scale the Hague’s Living Lab to the rest of the city, region and (eventually) the world.

Driving the Adoption of Living Labs (City of The Hague). Create a data commons and marketplace mechanism through which different actors will interact with each other in The Hague’s Living Lab, and where citizens are empowered to own, share and earn from their data. Incentivize all citizens and companies to interact with the public digital ecosystem of the city. 

Building New Critical Infrastructures, Beneficial for the World (Nature 2.0). Each day of your life, you eat, you drink, you move, you breathe and live as part of an ecosystem, the earth our planet. All species need food, water, places to move and live. They make it work (in an emergent way). Today, man lives and does business. What would happen if you created critical infrastructures purely purpose-driven? What would a beneficial critical infrastructure look like? 

 Compliant Air Cargo Flow (KLM Cargo). Provide transparency on shipping characteristics from and for collaborating supply chain parties to ensure a compliant air cargo flow. Your solution will bridge the gap in trust in the air cargo market by enabling all parties in the supply chain to give and get relevant and compliant data. 

Circular Economy for Freight Packaging (TVM). How do we ensure better reuse of freight packaging in a world without incentives and transparency? Create a logistics protocol so anyone can localize, identify, certify, return, reuse, and repair freight packaging. 

Inclusive Safety Communities (Dutch National Police, Dutch Public Safety Alliance). Create a data exchange infrastructure for public safety and security in communities, incentivizing everyone to share and exchange relevant data on incidents and crises, and allowing civilians to work with professionals to resolve emergency situations. 

 Open-Source 911 for Digital Space (Province of Groningen, Cybersecurity Noord-Nederland). Create a new type of an automated dispatch center for digital crime (“the 911 for digital space”), allowing any organization to improve its reporting, warning and response mechanisms. Enable everyone to share relevant information about incidents and solutions so we all can fight digital crime.

Self-Sovereign Digital Identity in Action (Dutch Blockchain Coalition, Dutch Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations). Demonstrate the value of Self-Sovereign Identity for business and society, by enabling all other Odyssey Hackathon teams benefit from an operational SSI framework and infrastructure. Collaborate on delivering an SSI ecosystem and framework to prove the identity of people, organizations and things in other hackathon tracks. 

Interact with Digital Twin Simulations of Multiple Transactive Grids (Grid Singularity, Engie). Build an application using www.D3A.io to simulate the bottom-up energy market of the future. Enable consumers to become active market prosumers, and find the new technical, regulatory and business roles of energy companies, DSOs, TSOs, and regulators. 

From Plastic Pollution to Upcycling Economy (VMware, DAML). Build a solution that incentivizes corporations to source used plastic from communities in developing countries in order to create a socially inclusive and beneficial plastic sourcing process. 

Consumer and Organization-Driven Decarbonization (VMware, DAML). Make C02 accountability as normal as paying taxes. Co-create an inclusive global CO2 accounting framework and infrastructure to accelerate the consumer-driven decarbonization of our global economy. 

The Future of Acute Healthcare (City of Groningen, UMCG, Hanze UAS, University of Groningen, Province of Groningen, Odyssey). Create a coordinating infrastructure that supports all entry points to the acute care system to enable every patient to receive the best acute care path at the right time and in the right place from the right caregiver, taking into account the available resources.

Give Buildings a Personality (Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations, FIBREE and Kadaster). How can we aggregate and bundle a real-estate object’s distributed data through a Unique Object Identifier, demonstrating the benefits to real-estate developers, home-owners and regulatory bodies? The Unique Object Identifier should function like the familiar barcode used in many fields. https://bit.ly/2rgq8yn 

Protecting Marine Biodiversity in International Waters (International Union for Conservation of Nature, International Council of Environmental Law). Build a decentralized sovereign nature-data exchange infrastructure for anyone and anything to contribute and use its data on the High Seas. Enabling nature’s data to speak for itself and therefore enabling everyone to act on behalf of nature.  

A Digital Architecture for Peace (Business Plan for Peace, Dutch Ministry of Defence, Innovation Centre FRONT). Use existing methodologies and tools to take away the violent approach to conflicts by co-creating an inclusive protocol empowering anyone to connect, contribute, act and learn the skills to prevent the violent escalation of conflicts.   

Generation Now (Odyssey). Generation Now doesn’t wait until tomorrow to take action. These 10-18 year-olds want to make an impact beyond school and beyond protest. Bring your (class)mates and start building the solutions the world needs, together with big companies and governments at the Odyssey Hackathon 2020. Who should apply?

Momentum is optimized for startups, established startups, scale-ups, SMEs, corporate teams, as well as community and student teams who want to work on one of the challenges outlined.

*Update: The Odyssey Hackathon 2020, originally scheduled for April 3-5, has been rescheduled and will now take place completely online. Read the message from Odyssey Founder & CEO Rutger van Zuidam, to find out more about the updated program, the new online Odyssey experience, and the open-source development of the new digital infrastructure to support the online hackathon.