Paradigm participates in a European Space Agency Hackathon
Paradigm, FARI, and the City of Brussels recently teamed up at the ESA's "Acceleration Days." Their project: "See the city from above, act on the ground," or how to combine space, AI, and 3D to anticipate mass evacuations. Their "playground": the Sporting Anderlecht stadium and the Winter Wonders site.
How can space technologies and artificial intelligence improve crowd evacuation during an incident? This was the challenge posed by the ESA during the Acceleration Days, held from October 20 to 24 at the Redu Space Centre.
For this event, the innovation sprint, inspired by hackathons, took on a distinctly Belgian, and even Brussels, flavor. The ESA partnered with safe.brussels and the Brussels-Midi Police Zone to organize this event, which, for the first time, brought together public and private stakeholders. Eight teams were selected from over twenty applications from across Europe.
At the invitation of FARI, Paradigm joined the adventure, along with the City of Brussels. The team (the only one from the public sector) consisted of Susheel Nath and Siméon Michel for FARI, Catalin Turlica, Lara Servais, and Bertrand Van den Steen for the City of Brussels, and Claude Hannecart for Paradigm.
Over the course of five days of intensive work, two prototypes were developed: one around the Lotto Park Stadium, better known as the home of Sporting Anderlecht, and the other around the Winter Wonders festival at Place Sainte-Catherine.
Highlighting the key role of public innovation in urban resilience
For this dual project, the team emphasized a collaborative and open approach to create an interoperable, standardized, and trusted data environment. The project involved 3D modeling of urban environments, visual simulations, and AI-based recommendations, all while promoting open source and data sharing among partners.
"Our team was very complementary," commented our colleague Claude Hannecart (Digital Transformation). "FARI for the AI simulation, the City of Brussels for the smart city and evacuation scenarios, and Paradigm for the 3D modeling. The data we contributed to the project came partly from UrbIS, supplemented by highly detailed 3D layers, both exterior and interior, whether it was the bays, corridors, or surroundings of the Sporting stadium, or the layout of the stands at the Winter Wonders festival."
The challenge was ultimately won by a British company. Beyond the outcome, this experience has strengthened ties between public and academic stakeholders and highlighted the key role of public innovation in urban resilience. Discussions will continue to explore potential future directions for this fruitful collaboration.
