Project admission for the third edition of the World Data Viz Challenge 2020 Barcelona-Kobe, the dataviz competition organized by the City Councils of Barcelona and Kobe (Japan), starts on the 14th of September and will be open until the 26th of October. The best project will receive a 1.000 € prize and the best dataviz presented by university students will be awarded with a special mention of 250 €.

Team of judges. The projects will be evaluated by experts in urbanism such as Pilar García Almirall, Miguel Mayorga Cárdenas and Montserrat Pareja-Eastaway, in data analysis as Victor Pascual and Pere-Pau Vázquez, and in the impact that digital transformation has on citizens like Albert Cuesta, Verónica Kuchinow and Tere Serra i Majem. You can check their biographies and career paths following this link.

Objective of the contest
Its main objective is to highlight the challenges faced by smart cities and to invite citizens to address their realities and issues. Thanks to data analysis and visualisation, participants will have an opportunity to make proposals that can be useful for further public policy elaboration and improvement.

At the same time, the contest aims to encourage the use of open data published by different entities and which, in the case of the Barcelona City Council, can be found at the Open Data BCN portal; develop critical thinking towards the use of data in the digital environment, and increase the exercise of data-sovereignty by citizens.

Origin of the contest
In 1993, the cities of Barcelona and Kobe signed a twinning agreement to promote cultural, educational, sports, economic and technological exchange. Two years later, after the earthquake that affected the Japanese city, Barcelona collaborated in sending humanitarian aid. In 2018, the 25th anniversary of the twinning took place and, to celebrate it, both municipalities jointly organized the first edition of the contest. After the success of this first call, in 2019 the challenge was proposed once again to citizens through the second edition.

2020 edition
The theme of this year’s contest should reflect any aspect of the reality or a problem related to the city of Barcelona in the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that are aligned with the Strategy for the promotion of the Agenda 2030 in the city of Barcelona. The 17 SDGs encompass major social, economic and environmental challenges with the aim of ensuring vital opportunities, quality of life and social inclusion. Therefore, actions to reduce inequalities, to achieve gender equality or to combat climate change, as well as public health management, can be interesting topics, among many others, to elaborate and contribute new ideas.

Proceeding and deadlines to participate
In accordance with the Terms and Call for participation, the Registration form must be completed and the work to be submitted shall be added. No prior registration is necessary.

• The publication of the finalists list and communication to the authors will take place on November 9.
• Finally, on November 17, the Dataviz presentation and awards ceremony will take place.
  * This calendar could be affected by the exceptional circumstances derived from the Covid-19.

The website of this edition offers all the information on the call, its contents, objectives, dates of participation, form of evaluation of the works, prizes, etc.

Organizers
The World Data Viz Challenge 2020 Barcelona-Kobe is jointly organized by the city councils of Barcelona and Kobe. On behalf of the Barcelona City Council, the BIT Habitat Foundation is leading the project, with the collaboration of the Department of International Relations and the Municipal Data Office.