From 25 to 27 October 2022, four of the current students and one alumni from the Master of Science in Risk Management, Faculty of Economics, University of Tirana, participated in the first edition of Tirana-Climathon 2022, trying to offer a solution for environmental and urban challenges that Tirana faces. Their group, named “The Climate Sailors” used knowledge and insights obtained through the Jean Monnet modules they participated in during their Master Program.
Climathon, initiated by EIT Climate-KIC created by the European Commission, is a global 2-day climate change hackathon which takes place in different cities around the world to bring together climate challenges with the people who want to undertake initiatives and are eager to solve them.
Our group of students and alumni from Master of Science, managed to give their solutions within 2 days with the support of their professors Elona Pojani and Perseta Grabova, who are academic coordinators of two Jean Monnet Modules at University of Tirana, and Xhoana Hudhra.
The city of Tirana is particularly exposed to high temperatures for many days in a row and high pollution. Since 1990 dramatic changes have occurred in Albania, including governmental, political, economic, cultural, environmental and social reforms. These changes also affected the urban sprawl and the decrease of the open space areas, parks, green surfaces and public properties. The transition from a totalitarian regime to a free-market economy brought a rapid urbanization of the city and massive construction, which had a wide impact on the environment and climate of the city. Given the daily urban environmental stresses of Tirana, and also its increasing vulnerability to climate change, the project of our students followed the vision to turn Tirana into an “eco-friendly” city. Addressing these issues, the Climate Sailors chose to work on measuring and detecting environmental hotspots through an intelligent system they conceived
The Climathon is all about bringing together interested people and finding innovative solutions to current problems that our society faces toward climate challenges.
Looking forward to participating in the next edition together with our group of students in the Disaster Risk Management and Climate Change Adaptation modules.
