Alstom organises a Hackathon in association with Ecole 42 in Paris

Alstom is embarking upon a brand new kind of venture with a hackathon based on the connected metro, in collaboration with Ecole 42, a French computer programming school in Paris. This is the challenge the teams of encoding students will face on 17 and 18 March: they will have 48 hours to come up with a design for how the metro will look in 2030, offering connected mobility designed to revolutionise the passenger experience through prototypes for mobile applications, services, the IoT (Internet of things) or more simply through the creation of an API (Application Programming Interface).

In the future Grand Paris Express network, digital applications will be an integral part of everyday mobility. How can this trend towards digital applications be applied to an urban transport system in existence for over a century? This is one of the major challenges set by the Société du Grand Paris and its "world's most connected metro" project.

To ensure that the students are able to work in the best possible conditions, the public data for the transport systems across the city of Paris will be made available to them. Alstom will also provide access to the data extracted from existing metro trains, but this will remain anonymous.

In order to stimulate the ideas process and provide the students with the best possible support, an "ideas battle" evening will take place on the 8th March at the Ecole 42, during which, experts from Alstom will be able to interact with the students and answer their questions.