Recap: Meet the Winners of Hack for a Sustainable Future

With Hack for a Sustainable Future, Esri and TechCrunch called on developers around the world to imagine new approaches to pressing global challenges. Participants applied leading location technologies to their innovative ideas in support of a better world—and their creations provide an inspiring glimpse at just how big an impact the global developer community can really make.  

Over 300 developers worked to submit 35 unique projects. They tackled topics from conservation to healthcare, and asked questions like where to find affordable housing and how to safely navigate roads with high incidence of traffic accidents. While this story focuses on the three winning projects selected by our judges, we hope you’ll also view the full project gallery to see the breadth of solutions generated during this event. 

 Explore the gallery 

It’s common knowledge that cars and planes are contributing to carbon emissions, but how much do you know about the impact of traveling to digital destinations? DigitalFootprint.earth estimates how much carbon dioxide is produced each time you access a given website. 

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As full-time web developers, collaborators Samuel Larsen-Disney and Yannis Panagis seek out hackathons to stay creative and curious in their spare time. Browsing Devpost for their next challenge, they found Hack for a Sustainable Future and their imagination was captured by the opportunity to get more hands-on experience with location-based services.

The duo first considered sustainability-themed topics like electric vehicles and carbon offsets, but ultimately Larsen-Disney and Panagis wanted to build something more relevant to their day-to-day lives. For developers, Panagis said, this meant connecting the idea of sustainability to the digital spaces they help build. The result was DigitalFootprint.earth, a web application that uses a 3D globe to show you how far you are from the servers that deliver content for the websites you visit, and how much CO₂ is produced per visit (the further the digital content needs to travel, the more CO₂ is produced).

As the first-place team, Larsen-Disney and Panagis will be presenting their project at the 2022 Esri Developer Summit. They’re preparing by smoothing out a few features of the app—improving audit speeds, for one, as well as looking for ways to reduce the site’s carbon footprint in keeping with the app’s purpose. They’re excited by what they were able to build in the course of just three weeks, and look forward to new capabilities in the pipeline for ArcGIS Platform including additional 3D data layers they can add to the app’s globe.

Greenhouse gases aren’t visible to the naked eye—so how can we best understand where high concentrations exist?

Seeing the Unseen is an app for local leaders to visualize carbon dioxide concentration for more targeted mitigation efforts.

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For winners Gijs Van Den Dool, William Tahar, Bénédicte De Gelder, and Ankur Shah, the idea came first. The team of colleagues behind Seeing the Unseen had already conceptualized an application to visualize carbon dioxide concentration. The team had a few concepts in progress, but hadn't created a full product. Then Van Den Dool happened across Hack for a Sustainable Future on LinkedIn, and the team seized the chance to build out a geographic information system (GIS)-powered app with Esri's new technology.

Biomass could become a clean energy powerhouse—but is it economically viable for businesses and energy providers?

Biome helps policymakers, investors, and entrepreneurs identify areas where biomass infrastructure makes economic sense.

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Amit Sen, a software engineer specializing in geospatial technology, discovered Hack for a Sustainable Future when Amy Niessen, Esri's developer community manager, shared the event on social media.

The social impact theme immediately stood out—as did the chance to get hands-on experience with the latest tools from Esri, where Sen had worked in years past, though he had lost touch with the company's technology when he moved on to other roles. He enlisted the help of his sister, Sonia Sen, a technology strategist with a geography background, so that they could brainstorm and tell the app's story.