Highways England Hackathon Looks to Digital Transformation of England’s roads

We have joined forces with Highways England to unlock the value of data on England’s Motorways in an intense 24-hour hackathon event in on the 8th and 9th February 2020.

We’re looking for SMEs, Academics, Students and Hackathon Pros with an interest in turning data into real-world solutions for England’s Strategic Road Network, to join us on the 8^th and 9^th February 2020. Up for grabs is £1000 worth of vouchers plus an exclusive opportunity for the winner to work with Connected Places Catapult and Highways England develop their ideas on mobility innovation further.

We’ll provide a wealth of data from traffic flows, accident information to the location of every piece of hardware on the network. Competitors will be asked to find ways to aid decision making & planning, improve safety, provide a better service to road users and find new ways to reduce disruption from maintenance.

The solutions will help Highways England to better manage the Strategic Road Network.  This network of 4,300 miles of motorways and major (trunk) roads forms the economic backbone of the country, being relied on by both local and international business.  Currently, the network carries a third of all traffic by mileage and two-thirds of heavy goods traffic in the country.

Melissa Giusti, Innovation Manager at Highways England said,

“We are looking to promote creative and innovative thinking within Highways England through this Hackathon, to inspire us about the future. There is tons of information and data in Highways England sitting in different teams. Finding new ways to use it could bring huge benefits to our operations teams and to road users. We want Hackathon participants to demonstrate new ways to look at road data to create new solutions for the road network.”

At the end of the event, judges will pick the best idea based on a pitch from each team. The winning idea will change the way we see our road network. It could:

• Find a new way of identifying accident risks to improve safety
• Improve the information available to road users and operators
• Show us how we can operate and maintain the network with less disruption
• Surprise us with something we hadn’t considered before

You can sign up for the event now here.

This event has passed, but to find out the results of the event, please click here.