Climate change is the greatest challenge facing humanity. To enable young people to do something about it, the Gesellschaft für Informatik and the universities of Paderborn and Bochum launched the Climate Data Entrepreneurial Club pilot project on June 1, 2023. In it, students can acquire expertise in computer science, earth observation and pedagogy in order to initiate and prototype their own sustainability projects. The German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection is funding the project with around one million euros for two years.

Participants work with real data

The project is aimed at students in grades 10 to 13 (ages 16 to 19). Through easily customizable and expandable learning modules, they are trained in digital, AI and data skills. In the process, participants work with data from European and German satellite missions such as the Copernicus Earth Observation Program and other satellite missions such as EnMap, TerraSAR-X/TanDEM-X and the Sentinel fleet.

In particular, girls and young women will be encouraged and empowered to engage with computer science and data science and actively participate in the development of solutions to combat climate change through engagement with geospatial and Earth observation data and the self-effective maker approach.

The project team attaches great importance to the dissemination of the knowledge gained and the exchange with politics, civil society and science. To this end, the initiators are activating a network of science, practice and education policy actors in order to anchor the results in school and out-of-school education in the long term. In the course of the project, open workshops will be held in addition to the hackathons to clarify the needs of the various groups of actors and ensure the integration of the research results into established structures.