From February 26 to March 5, 2021, the third edition of the European Big Data Hackathon took place, organized by the European Commission (Eurostat).

This hackathon takes place every two years as an event preceding the international NTTS (New Techniques and Technologies for Statistics) conference organized within the structures of the European Commission in Brussels.

This year's Hackathon had an exceptionally remote formula, so it lasted not three, but seven days. Teams of three from all over Europe were to find an answer to the question of how the pandemic will affect the future of international trade. Hackathon participants had at their disposal the Big Data environment prepared by the organizers, containing databases in the field of, inter alia, foreign trade (export, import, type of transport) in the twenty-year series, the number of COVID-19 cases, air and sea connections, etc.

After the initial evaluation on March 4, there were 21 teams that presented their applications on March 5, 2021.

Polish team had three members:

• Ewelina Niewiadomska - employee of the Statistical Office in Szczecin
• Michał Bis - employee of the Statistical Office in Szczecin
• Jacek Maślankowski - employee of the Statistical Office in Gdańsk

They have prepared an analytical tool called "Dashboard for Forecasting and Simulating Trading Trends", presenting over 30 different indicators based on 9 different data sets. The tool allows for a wide spectrum of data visualization, incl. correlation and flow diagrams, or graphs, based on data calculated using Big Data methods, incl. machine learning. Moreover, this tool uses the highest standards of statistical software, incl.  an API,  accessibility tools and a gamification element. Tool is available at: https://statisticspoland.github.io/EU_Big_Data_Hackathon_2021/

The Polish team won 2nd place – 1st place win Italy, 3rd Lithuania, 4th France, 5th Germany, 6th Norway. It should be added that in the previous edition of the Hackathon (2019), the Polish team won 1st place - which confirms that in our statistical team we have very high-class specialists in the field of Big Data, who are at the European forefront.

Application presentation:

When: 09/03/2021

Time: 2:30 pm

Watch online: https://bit.ly/3brqxCn