Govhack 2018

Luke was awarded the title for his enthusiasm towards helping others and supporting a youth team, all while completing his project on time.

DiscoVR gives users a preview of new adventure locations around Australia before living the experience in the real world. Winning the 2018 GovHack People’s Choice award, the app immerses the user in a virtual reality environment, bringing the location and the surrounding conditions to life through a visual and aural experience, not with numbers and graphs, but with clouds, wind, rain and sunshine.

Read more about DiscoVR

In 2018, we had events in Brisbane; Cairns; Gladstone; Gold Coast; Ipswich; Peregian Beach; Rockhampton; Sunshine Coast; Toowoomba and Townsville. GovHack QLD will be back in 2019, to build upon and celebrate the social and economic value of Open Data published by Government. More information about our event locations will be coming shortly, so watch this space!

The challenge set for the hackers was:  How might we engage Queenslanders with Q ANZAC 100: Memories for a New Generation?

Marking 100 years since our involvement in the First World War, the ANZAC Centenary is a time to honour the service and sacrifice of our original ANZACs. The Spirit Lives is a 2018 GovHack award winning project and applies machine learning to digitised World War I soldiers’ portraits from open State Library datasets to automatically colourise and 3D model an image.

Read more about The Spirit Lives

The challenge set for the hackers was:   How might we assist councils to build healthier and stronger communities?

Inactivity is major health risk factor impacting mental and physical well-being and incurring significant social and economic costs. Encouraging healthy lifestyles inclusive of physical activity, governments provide free facilities and maintain recreational spaces. Get Active proposes an app which connects a user with local recreation facilities and spaces.

Read more about Get Active

The challenge set for the hackers was:  How can we overcome the cultural differences between business and researchers to encourage innovation and collaboration?

Academic Connect is a project that uses data to predict business entities most likely to require assistance with research. Addressing the lack of collaboration between Governments, universities and industry and to encourage innovation, the application would use intellectual property data to identify those businesses most likely to benefit from engaging research and seek to build a community around this platform.

Read more about Academic Connect

The challenge set for the hackers was: How can we use ocean data to better support decision making for how we use our oceans? What sort of information presentation could provide more effective understanding of ocean dynamics beneath the ocean surface over a period of time?

Project Arc proposes a forecasting engine to predict the movement of major flows of ocean-based rubbish and an accompanying app that would allow users out on the water to report the location of such waste. This information would allow the placement of sea bins to capture and later remove the rubbish from the ocean.

Read more about Project Arc

The challenge set for the hackers was: How might we understand what makes communities strong in disasters?

Smart Ways to Live is a winning 2018 GovHack entry that proposed the development of an interactive educational app that increases community resilience using a fun and innovative method.

Read more about Smart Ways

The challenge set for the hackers was: How can we help older Queenslanders to stay connected to the community to continue to live a fulfilling life?

Markdown is a proof of concept application that provides a way for senior and companion card holders to find local businesses offering discounted products or services while encouraging them to get out and connect with their community.

Read more about Markdown

The challenge set for the hackers was: How might we prevent littering of fast food packaging?

alitternation is a web application proposed as part of GovHack 2018. The app aims to make it easy to identify rubbish and decide on the method of disposal. This will help provide Australians both the knowledge and motivation to clean up their communities.

Read more about alitternation

The challenge set for the hackers was: How might we tell the stories of immigration to Queensland to learn from the past and inform the future?

Storytelling in 3D was a 2018 GovHack project which proposed a unique way of raising awareness of Queensland's immigration history by using a large, rotating electronic globe to show people how Queensland was settled.

Read more about Storytelling in 3D

The challenge set for the hackers was: How might we make discovering and understanding scientific data for a location possible?

Umbrella SciSearch proposed the development of a search engine that uses location-based environmental and natural resources data from open-source Queensland Government databases. It would display location-based data in a simple and easy-to-understand webpage, giving users a clearer picture of the environmental landscape.

Read more about Umbrella Sci

The challenge set for the hackers was: How might we determine the future tourism job needs for Queensland?

Take Me Anywhere aimed to link skilled workers with unique jobs in tourism in rural and regional Queensland. Focused on boosting skilled workers in Queensland’s tourism sector, the project proposed the development of a search engine website that uses unique algorithms to crawl online listings for tourism jobs in Queensland.

Read more about Take Me Anywhere