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[Apologies for cross-posting]<br><br>Dear GeoForAll colleagues,<br></div><div>I am sending
this e-mail to inform you about a hackathon on OpenStreetMap, organised
by the United Nations and the European Commission in which I am involved
as a Mentor.</div><div><br></div><div>I would appreciate it if you can disseminate the message below and promote the hackathon within your networks.</div><div><br></div><div>Many thanks!</div><div>Kind regards,</div><div>Marco</div><div><br></div><div>_______________________________</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal;margin:0cm 0cm 8pt;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:black" lang="EN-US">You are cordially invited by the United Nations -
Office of Information and Communication Technologies (OICT) and the
Directorate-General for Informatics of European Commission (DG DIGIT) to
participate in the <b>“Open Source Software 4 Sustainable Development Goals
(OSS4SDG): SDG# 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities” Hackathon</b>, which
will take place fro</span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:rgb(51,51,51)" lang="EN-US">m <b>3 to 31
October</b></span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:black" lang="EN-US">. This second innovation
competition </span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:black" lang="EN-IE">of the OSS4SDG
initiative </span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:black" lang="EN-US">is launched in partnership
with the </span><a href="https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright" style="color:rgb(5,99,193);text-decoration:underline" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN-US">OpenStreetMap (OSM)</span></a><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:black" lang="EN-US"> project and
aims at tackling challenges related to </span><a href="https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal11" style="color:rgb(5,99,193);text-decoration:underline" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN-US">Sustainable Development
Goal (SDG) 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities</span></a><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:black" lang="EN-US">.</span><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN-IE"><span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:black" lang="EN-US">For the last decades, the world has been
experiencing the largest wave of urban growth in history. At this pace, it is
expected that by 2050 around 6.5 billion people — two-thirds of all humanity —
will be living in urban areas. Much of this growth has led to a boom in
mega-cities, bringing new opportunities and access to diverse goods and
services available to its citizens. However, this exponential growth in the
population has also triggered social, economic and environmental challenges.
Cities have become home to high concentrations of poverty, causing inequality,
and resulting in wealthy communities coexisting (separately) alongside from
slums and informal settlements. </span><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN-IE"><span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:black" lang="EN-US"> </span><span style="font-size:12pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN-IE"><span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:black" lang="EN-US">To monitor these complex urbanization process and
facilitate sustainable growth, the United Nations and the European Union
Commission have implemented diverse Geospatial Information Systems (GIS) and
other mapping technologies such as OpenStreetMap. This has proved to
effectively illustrate surface areas (through maps and diagrams) and help to
evaluate progress on the SDGs agenda to create a better world. To this end, the
EC and the UN effort at democratizing access to open data and cartographic
techniques that individuals and governments can use to better understand the
work being done by both organizations towards achieving sustainability. <span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:black" lang="EN-US"><span> </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;line-height:normal;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:black" lang="EN-US">The Hackathon includes 7 challenges and
participants can submit a solution to any of them by October 31, 2022. </span><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:black" lang="EN-US"><span>The winners
will receive <b>a total prize of 10 thousand euros</b>. </span>All information, including instructions to
participate as well as evaluation criteria, is available at the Hackathon page
at </span><a href="https://ideas.unite.un.org/sdg11/Page/Overview" style="color:rgb(5,99,193);text-decoration:underline" target="_blank"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif" lang="EN-US">https://ideas.unite.un.org/sdg11/Page/Overview</span></a><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:black" lang="EN-US">.</span></p></div>
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