A regional hackathon backed by the European Union and Costa Rican institutions will run in October to develop prototype solutions using 5G technology for sectors including agriculture, health and tourism.
The Central American 5G Innovation Hackathon has been announced by the Costa Rican Agency for Innovation and Research (PCII) alongside the Ministry of Science, Innovation, Technology and Telecommunications (MICITT), the EU and the Foundation for the Internationalisation of Public Policies (FIAP), with support from the National Centre for High Technology (CENAT), the EU Delegation to Costa Rica announced on Friday, cited by the European External Action Service (EEAS).
It is open to participants across Central America, including university students, entrepreneurs, start-ups, developers, researchers, ICT specialists, technology companies, telecoms operators and social innovators.
The event is scheduled to take place from 5 to 9 October, with teams working on challenges in five areas: smart and sustainable tourism; biodiversity, the environment and climate action; smart agriculture and the bioeconomy; digital health and wellbeing; and smart cities, mobility and risk management.
Testing ideas on Costa Rica’s 5G “testbed”
Projects will be developed within Costa Rica’s 5G Testbed — a facility designed for testing and validating new uses of 5G networks and related tools — including stand-alone 5G networks, edge computing (processing data closer to where it is generated) and the Internet of Things, which connects devices via the internet, the EU Delegation to Costa Rica said.
Participants will be offered specialist mentoring, technical support and spaces for experimentation, and projects with the “greatest potential” may progress to validation processes within the testbed.
A virtual webinar to explain the hackathon and how to take part will be held on 27 August at 8am, with registration available online.
