TerraTales

Problem

Climate data is freely available but hard for most people to understand or connect to their own choices.

Solution

A website built on NASA's U.S. Greenhouse Gas Center data: illustrated stories for Brazil, Egypt and Germany with charts and native-language narration, an interactive game where eco-friendly choices change the story, and a forecast section driven by a CNN-LSTM model on air-sea CO₂ flux maps and a regression on population density.

Demo moment

Not described in the sources.

Why it stood out

• organizer statedWon the award for most creatively communicating the potential of open data through storytelling.Source ↗
• organizer statedShared stories of how climate change affects Egypt, Brazil and Germany, with an AI climate forecasting model and an interactive game for eco-friendly choices.Source ↗
• team statedThree layers by design: story to engage, game to show individual impact, forecast to warn — because 'storytelling alone isn't enough'.Source ↗
• team statedEach country is narrated in its own language (Egyptian Arabic for Egypt), tying the global story to the local event's audience.Source ↗

Lessons for your next hackathon

• Give data a cast of characters; a family meeting frame makes three countries comparable at a glance.
• Pair the story with one thing the audience does and one consequence they see.