Cátedra ESPACIOS has announced the launch of the hackathon “Data & Culture: Analytical Challenges for Cultural Facilities”, an initiative aimed at developing data-driven tools and solutions for analysing the system of cultural facilities in Spain. The activity is part of the Territorial Plan for Cultural Facilities (PITEC), promoted by the Spanish Ministry of Culture, which seeks to map, evaluate and strategically prioritise these facilities through a database and an analytical platform accessible at serapeum.uv.es.

The hackathon, scheduled for late April, seeks teams with technical capabilities interested in the intersection of data, territory and culture. The call is open to undergraduate students in Business Intelligence & Analytics (BIA), master’s students in data analysis, data science or artificial intelligence, as well as other technical profiles interested in these fields.

Participants will work on seven challenges defined within the PITEC project, including isochronic population analysis, territorial mobility analysis based on open data, automated database cleaning and updating, classification of cultural impacts from news sources, and the development of recommendation systems both for users and for optimal location of new cultural facilities. Open proposals aligned with the project’s objectives are also welcome.

Selected ideas will receive initial funding of 400 euros for development, and the proposals finally implemented will compete for three prizes of 2,000, 1,000 and 400 euros, respectively. In addition, participating teams will have access to the PITEC database, territorial and mobility data from open sources, as well as technical and academic mentoring throughout the process. There is also the possibility of integrating the developments into the Ministry of Culture’s project and exploring internship opportunities within the framework of Cátedra ESPACIOS.

As a preliminary step, an information session will take place on Monday, 30 March at 17:00 in room 2P04 of the Faculty of Economics at the University of Valencia. The session will present the project, the challenges and the hackathon format, and will address participants’ questions. The initiative is coordinated by Virgilio Pérez (academic coordination), Manu Genovés (technical coordination) and Fátima Cucart (participant coordination).