The Sewers4COVID team with NTUA participation won 1st prize in EUvsVirus Hackathon
Diving into sewers for data saves lives during pandemics
University of Thessaly and National Technical University of Athens won the prestigious Pan-European #EUvsVirusHackathon by proposing an innovative solution to fight against pandemics. Professor Chrysi Laspidou, Dimitris Kofinas, Alexandra Ioannou (UTH) and Professor Maria P. Papadopoulou (NTUA) teamed up with , , and to create Sewers4COVID solution against pandemics.
, hosted by the European Innovation Council, was a pan-European hackathon connecting civil society, innovators, partners and investors across Europe in order to develop innovative solutions for coronavirus-related challenges. have participated in the event during 24-27 April 2020.
Sewers4COVID has demonstrated a prototype that utilizes sewer surveillance and machine learning techniques to forecast pandemic outbreaks in real-time. Socio-economic conditions are also taken into account to identify the vulnerable groups that are at high risk. Sewers4COVID can quickly and cost-efficiently detect the pandemic hotspots at national scale. The solution will highlight the locations and the spread of the contagion, enabling decision-makers to take critical measures and deploy resources in advance to protect the communities from pandemics. Out of 2,150 projects submitted to 6 Domains (Health & Life, Business Continuity, Social & Political Cohesion, Remote Working & Education, Digital Finance, and Other) and 37 challenges, the #EUvsVirus judge panel has .