Urban Innovation Data Hack 2024
A cross-sector hackathon uniting data and design to prototype solutions for pressing urban challenges.
Overview
As part of the inaugural Arup + AURIN Urban Innovation Data Hack in March 2024, I helped bring together urbanists, developers, designers, students, and government stakeholders to tackle pressing urban challenges—ranging from digital twins to climate adaptation—through data-driven prototyping and collaborative insight generation.
Responsibility
I played a key coordination and subject-matter expert role across the planning and execution stages. This included:
- Engaging senior stakeholders and maintaining momentum through comms and check-ins.
- Coordinating logistics with internal teams, ensuring a seamless setup with AV, venue, catering, and tech infrastructure.
- Providing technical mentoring during the hack itself, supporting participants in spatial data science, urban analytics, and digital tools.
- Acting as a domain guide for teams exploring innovation district data, demographic transitions, and climate responsiveness.
Outcome
The event attracted a diverse mix of participants and strengthened relationships across academia, industry, and government. It delivered a suite of early-stage prototypes and ideas using real urban datasets and contributed to growing momentum around Melbourne’s innovation district planning. The hackathon established a repeatable model for future cross-sector data events and reinforced Arup’s and AURIN’s roles as conveners of urban innovation.
