The Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg and THE NEW INSTITUTE are jointly launching the Urban Data Challenge Hamburg. The goal is to gain new insights into cycling and micromobility flows in Hamburg in order to make the city more livable and sustainable. The best proposed solution will be awarded €40,000.

The competition of ideas aims at innovative companies, start-ups, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and scientific institutions. The competition is looking for ideas and solution proposals based on a creative combination and evaluation of existing data sets that can help analyze mobility behavior. The focus particularly lies on bicycle and micromobility flows (e.g. eScooters) on Hamburg's roads and bicycle paths. In addition to its own data from the Urban Data Platform, Hamburg is also making privately held mobility data available for the first time in partnership with Bolt and IoT Venture. The best solution proposal will be awarded €40,000 and to develop and test it as a prototype in close cooperation with the Authority for Transport and Mobility Transition and the winning team.

Francesca Bria, Program Director for THE NEW INSTITUTE: “We are delighted to announce the launch of the Urban Data Challenge Hamburg. The Challenge involves data sharing between companies, the city, and the innovation ecosystem and provides practical insights into the collaborative use of urban data in the public interest. The learnings from the Challenge will support The New Hanse in its European wide effort to democratise data governance.“

Jan Pörksen, State Secretary and Head of the Senate Chancellery Hamburg: "We are looking forward to exciting competition entries and practical insights in combining and analyzing data from various governmental and private data sources. Our goal is to make all such data more usable in the future in the interest of Hamburg's citizens. We want to further improve the quality of life in our city with the smart use of data."

Beyond the specific use case on bicycle traffic and micromobility, the project sponsors hope that the joint use of urban data by the administration and private companies will provide insights into sustainable models of data sharing - in terms of their technical architecture, standards, digital protocols and concrete implementation. The Senate Chancellery's Department for IT and Digitization, the Authority for Transport and Mobility Transition, and the State Office for Geoinformation and Surveying are active participants in the Urban Data Challenge. The partner Bolt, aims to accelerate the transition from personal cars to shared mobility, offering better alternatives for every use case, including cab and rental car services, e-scooters and car sharing, and food and grocery deliveries. The partner IoT Venture, develops and sells GPS trackers that, when combined with an app, open up a new kind of ser-vice world for e-bikes. In Hamburg, Bolt is currently active with its e-scooter and e-bike offering.

More information on the Urban Data Challenge Hamburg, the conditions of participation and the evaluation process can be found at www.thenewhanse.eu.
The application documents for the competition of ideas can be found here.

Background:
The Urban Data Challenge Hamburg is part of The New Hanse project, designed by Italian transformation expert Francesca Bria for THE NEW INSTITUTE. Bria also heads the Data Commons Working Group that accompanies the project. Among other things, the high-level expert forum aims to develop blueprints for secure and responsible data exchange between government, private and civil society actors in cities. The Urban Data Challenge is the first collaborative project under The New Han-se after the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg and THE NEW INSTITUTE announced their collaboration on data democracy and sustainability on July 1, 2022.

Download the Press Release: Launch of the Urban Data Challenge