More than 12,000 participants from 98 countries presented over 1,000 ideas in the Global Hack against the coronavirus backed by the European Union and the EU4Digital initiative. They included 8 submissions from Georgia, 4 from Ukraine, 4 from Belarus, and 3 each from Armenia, Azerbaijan and Moldova.

The hackathon had a total prize pool of €220,000, with the EU providing up to €75,000 for prize money to the winning teams.  The hackathon was organised by Accelerate Estonia, Garage48, and Guaana with the support of Devpost.

The Global Hack event partnered with tech enthusiasts, business leaders, project managers, marketing experts, designers, and innovators from around the world to exchange ideas and practices to develop creative and practical prototypes. 

The organisers said they “couldn’t have succeeded without the support of the European Commission and the UN, an army of world-class thought leaders, the support of worldwide media, and the dedication of a team of ‘locked down’ volunteers worldwide who donated hundreds of hours of their time to bring the event to life”.

“This crisis has sparked a genuine global movement that nobody owns and everyone can participate in,” said event co-organiser Calum Cameron. ”People shut-in across the world are collaborating with tools from the start–up world at massive scale. Tools like rapid experimentation by prototyping ideas. They are finding they can solve the wicked real-world problems normally left to governments. They are discovering they are connected, and their ideas have no borders.”

The overall winner of The Global Hack is SunCrafter – Solar Powered Light-Disinfection.

The idea behind SunCrafter is that in order to achieve complete protection for every human in this crisis, a hygiene solution has to be inclusive and accessible. Current disinfection methods are location-dependent, unsustainable, require maintenance or technical know-how. The idea of a light-disinfection application was developed from scratch during the hackathon. Far-UVC-Light is proven to be a safe and efficient disinfection method, which can be used barrier-free solely by bathing your hands. The solution doesn’t need maintenance, produces no waste and is fully sustainable. See the video pitch.

Second place went to Act On Crisis – secure emotional support that fits your cultural background.

Before the crisis around one in ten people was in need of psychological support. With 3 billion people currently in lockdown, at least 300 million will be experiencing strong emotional imbalance, made worse by confinement and soaring unemployment figures. Act on Crisis hopes to cover at least 1,000 hr/week with 1-on-1 video calls or community rooms supervised by professionals, helping at least 4,500 people per week. See the video pitch.

The third runner-up is Material Mapper, which tackles the issue of construction waste, with the world’s first AI/ML powered forecasting tool that allows to predict re-usable material availability from demolition sites. See the video pitch.

Check out the results here: https://theglobalhack.com/results

https://theglobalhack.com