NASA Space Apps Challenge, held with the support of the Beeline reveals the winners

Beeline, a member of the international group "VEON", is the supporter of the local competition of the world’s largest international hackathon for the second time. The competition, jointly organized by the Tbilisi Startup Bureau and Ilia University, was held online in Georgia on October 2-4.

The NASA Space Apps Challenge takes place in 225 different locations around the world during 48 hours and aims to generate innovative ideas, which will help humanity to solve global problems. The NASA Space Apps Challenge is open to anyone interested in earth and space exploration, as well as coding, technology, design and other applied sciences. This year, NASA had identified 22 challenges, which were divided into 6 categories: observation, informing, maintaining, creating, confronting and connecting. The winning teams received cash prizes and are now competing in the NASA Global Award competition

According to the jury's decision, the Fire Detectors team took the first place, consisting of the Ilia State University students: Karlo Tevzadze, Mariam Shereshashvili and Giorgi Tkebuchava. The second winner of the hackathon became the team Two Degrees, which brings together four 11th graders: David Domuzashvili, Nika Svanidze, Nika Gaprindashvili and Alexandre Lashkarava.

"We have identified several ways to solve the problem, which led to one common goal: to find the source of the fire through a grid created by us, before the fire went beyond a small scale, in some cases to detect the threat even before it arose and to strengthen observation at these points. The project aims to create software that will process past data on fires by location, as well as take into account the weather forecast, time of year, days of the week, forest development area, tourist routes, etc., all the details that could have an effect on the origin of the fire,” -  Mariam Shereshashvili, a member of the Fire Detectors declared.

"We believe that bringing emissions to the statistics local level is one of the most important steps in tackling climate change. Our project aims to assist regional governments in implementing climate change mitigation measures and reducing Georgia's GHG emissions by 25% under the Paris Agreement. The project includes the code that can easily be used to regionalize emissions from other countries,” - David Domuzashvili, a member of The Two Degrees mentioned.

Beeline actively continues to support the development of startup ecosystems and innovations in Georgia and is aimed at creating new opportunities for young people and stimulating their aspirations. The collaboration between the Tbilisi Startup Bureau and the Beeline within the framework of the NASA Space Apps Challenge took place for the first time in October 2019.