German
Hack the Paradise! - When AI meets urban development
Second Smart City Hackathon shows how artificial intelligence can help shape our city of tomorrow
On June 13 and 14, 2025, Jena was once again the focus of digital urban development: The Smart City Forum and the second "Hack the Paradise!" hackathon took place as part of the Smart Cities Jena model project. Together with citizens, experts and developers, innovative solutions for municipal challenges were developed - with impressive commitment and creative results.
Exchange, inspiration and brainstorming
The Smart City Forum kicked off on Friday evening at JEDI. A total of 36 participants gained exciting insights into current developments in the field of artificial intelligence in a municipal context. In addition to technical impulses, concrete challenges were presented that were to be worked on in the hackathon the following day. The subsequent networking phase provided an opportunity for personal exchange and the formation of initial teams.
Creativity meets technology - a hackathon with depth
The actual hackathon started on Saturday morning at the Lichtwerkstatt Jena. In interdisciplinary teams, 28 participants took on five demanding challenges in just nine hours. The focus: the question of how AI solutions can help to make urban processes more efficient, more citizen-oriented and more sustainable.
The topics ranged from historical city encyclopedia texts to intelligent defect reports. Initial prototypes, data analyses and application ideas were created - some with technical depth, others as conceptual approaches.
Particularly convincing: the challenge "Intelligent defect detector for the city of Jena". The team developed an AI-supported solution for the automated processing of citizen reports - with high practical suitability and great potential for everyday administrative work. This solution was awarded both the jury prize and the audience prize - a strong signal of the practicality and added value of such ideas for local authorities.
Current evaluation and outlook
The results are currently being evaluated and further developed together with the challengers, mentors and departments. The aim is to test individual approaches in pilot projects or to integrate them into existing processes.
Thanks and recognition
The City of Jena would like to thank all participants who contributed their time, knowledge and creativity. Their commitment has shown how much innovation potential there is in cooperation between administration, civil society, science and business.
Special thanks also go to the jury, the mentors, the Thuringian Center for Learning Systems and Robotics (TZLR), the Lichtwerkstatt Jena and the "Business and Science" sub-project as part of the Smart Cities model project for their great support.
"Hack the Paradise!" has shown once again: There is enormous potential for innovation in Jena - especially when administration, science, business and civil society join forces. We look forward to the further development of the project ideas - and to the next hackathon!