Congratulations to Faculty of Math's students Kevin Lu (BCS '24) and Franco Chen, and Faculty of Environment's student Andrew Ding (BES '24), for winning second place at this year’s Esri Canada GIS Centers of Excellence Competition (ECCE) App Challenge!
The App Challenge is a competition held by Esri Canada to promote innovation and creativity. Each year three members form a group and are tasked to create an app within a week using Esri technology and open data to help solve real-world problems related to a specific theme.
Collaborating under the team's name Code Monkeys, they created MetroBooming. This app can aid developers, planners and policymakers to gain a better understanding of Vancouver’s urban expansion and housing crisis.
“The challenge was a fun last project at Waterloo, built together with my closest friends,” says Franco.
Through 3D visualization, the app helps people understand the root causes of Vancouver’s unaffordability using population and dwelling census data. MetroBooming allows users to visualize and compare potential outcomes, from the best-case scenarios where the number of new housing units is maximized to scenarios where the status quo remains unchanged.
Read the full story on the Faculty of Environment's website.