The team of university students from Singapore won one of the top awards at Sweden’s largest Hackathon event taking place in Stockholm from 4 to 6 April, 2019.
5 members of Vattn, the team’s name, consisted two Singaporeans, Adelric Wong and Neo Ann Qi, one Singapore permanent resident, Yanisa Suratpipit and two Swedish members, Philip Eriksson and Daniel Andersson. Vattn won over 75 other teams and earned the first prize of the Green Award, one of the six categories for Hackathon this year.
Hackathon Sweden is an event organized by the government agencies aiming to encourage people to engage in collaborative computer programming to increase the awareness of open data in the society. This year’s Hackathon focused on sustainability and creating the practical tools that can be useful for the daily life of people in society. At the event, there were six awards from six categories: Mobility, Green, Education and Science, Job, Business, and Health, were given to the team winners.
VATTN walked away with the Green Award and 30,000 Swedish kronor (S$4,400) with their concept of an application that can indicate the groundwater level to warn people so that they can prepare themselves for the emergencies such as droughts or flood.
One of the team members, Adelric Wong, told that he and the team were very surprised that they won the award because they had changed their idea from climate change to underground water level just two days before the award ceremony.
“I’m still amazed and overwhelmed with joy that my team and our idea won. The effort and dedication we placed into working out an idea has turned into fruition.” says Adelric Wong, student at the Software Engineering and Management bachelor’s programme at the University of Gothenburg.
As a part of their win, the team will present their winning idea at the Almedalen Week, a forum attended by Swedish political leaders in Visby, Sweden, on July 5, 2019.
