On Saturday, November 11th, and Sunday, November 12th, 2023, a moment of great innovation and commitment took place in Courmayeur with the Climathon Courmayeur organized by the Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini. It is a 24-hour hackathon that brings together citizens, entrepreneurs, representatives from the tourism sector, and researchers to creatively address the challenge of climate change in mountain areas.

This event is part of the Courmayeur Climate HUB project promoted by the Municipality of Courmayeur and funded by the European Union through the NextGenerationEU fund, as part of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan.

The Courmayeur hackathon is part of a global movement supported by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology, aimed at raising awareness about climate change issues and addressing the specific challenges of territories through the development of innovative ideas, actively involving citizens.

As in the previous 2019 edition, participants were divided into small groups and competed to find concrete solutions on the themes of water resources, sustainable mobility, and innovation in recycling.

At the end of the competition, a panel of experts selected the best project for each challenge category, awarding a cash prize.

In this year's edition, we are pleased to announce that the GdgRDItaly team (with the participation of Coralie Pellissier and Valerio Falcicchio for Team RDITALY) won the prize in the "Solutions for sustainable mobility in mountain areas" category with their Smart Bus project. This innovative application optimizes public transportation service in Valle d'Aosta using user-provided data, allowing the algorithm to create optimized shared pickup routes. A great success that demonstrates the commitment and creativity of the participants in addressing the environmental challenges of our time.

With the Regional Executive's deliberation No. 1635 dated December 6, 2021, the "Smart & Start VdA" Notice was approved in favor of new innovative companies, not listed, as well as freelancers, classified as small and micro-enterprises, for the implementation of technological and innovative development plans, within the scope of the Smart Specialization Strategy (S3) of Valle d'Aosta, which identify the growth objectives of the company and demonstrate the possibility of achieving them and their financial sustainability and are aimed at developing new products or services.

The grants provided by the Notice aim to promote the growth of new innovative companies established in Valle d'Aosta, which enhance the results of research at the production level.

RDITALY with its project "Guidexpress" won the first prize in 2022, securing financial support amounting to €107,802.40.

The project involves the experimental development of a pilot product usable for commercial purposes, specifically a smartphone app for iOS and Android to discover places to visit and experiences to live, enhancing and safeguarding the cultural and environmental heritage of Valle d'Aosta.

Thanks to advanced profiling and an algorithm based on artificial intelligence, it will be possible to generate personalized experiential tourist routes for each application user according to family composition, interests, starting location, and motor skills. Through the Big Data collected by the app, public entities will have access to a precise and targeted analysis, in real-time, of tourism trends in Valle d'Aosta. A gamification and remuneration system is planned for the app users and content creators based on points, badges, blockchain tokens, and NFTs.