A Hackathon, a term deriving from the words ʻhackʼ and ʻmarathonʼ, is both a development method and an innovation process over a specified period of time.

The concept is simple. We invited specialists from ITU, DTU, the Alexandra Institute and Rambøll and then divided them into four groups – engineers, data scientists, developers and machine learning specialists. They were asked to delve into the data from the Storebælt Bridge to search for new connections and workable ideas. The data included weather and wind conditions, vibrations on Storebælt’s hangers and GPS signals from the past two years.

All the hard work resulted in some clever concepts and once the champagne had been uncorked, it was Team Yellow who were the victors with their outstanding pitch. The team showed how traffic load impact on the Storebælt Bridge could be shown in real time by combining different data sources, sensors in the asphalt and vertical cameras.

“It was an excellent competition and an exciting experience for us,” said Lars Fuhr Pedersen, Technical Director, Sund & Bælt. “The winning solution is highly creative in its use of new technology. It is also implementable and we’re considering using part of the solution on our bridge.”