In 2019, Edgica participated in the Odyssey Hackathon in Groningen, Netherlands — one of the world’s largest blockchain and AI hackathons, gathering more than 1,500 developers, engineers, designers, and domain experts from around the world. The event, supported by the Dutch Royal House, government institutions, and leading technology organizations, focuses on building practical solutions for complex global challenges within a highly collaborative environment.
Previously known as the Dutch Blockchain Hackathon, Odyssey has become a major international platform where startups, corporations, public sector institutions, and technical experts collaborate to prototype innovations that benefit the global commons. Participants work intensively for 48 hours, forming multidisciplinary teams to design, build, and demonstrate working prototypes that address real-world challenges.
Among dozens of challenges spanning sustainability, finance, governance, and infrastructure, the Edgica team chose to tackle one of the most critical and high-risk problems in modern logistics: the safe transportation of hazardous materials.
Challenge
Hazardous materials — including explosives, flammable liquids, gases, oxidizers, toxic chemicals, and radioactive substances — are transported on public roads every day as part of global supply chains. While strict regulations govern these operations, accidents still occur due to human error, technical failures, environmental conditions, or lack of coordination between stakeholders.
When such incidents happen, the consequences can be severe. In the best-case scenario, transport operators may face regulatory penalties or financial losses. In the worst cases, accidents can lead to explosions, fires, environmental contamination, infrastructure damage, and threats to human life.
One of the key underlying problems is the lack of reliable and accessible real-time information. Emergency responders, such as fire services and disaster management teams, often do not have immediate access to accurate data about:
- What hazardous materials are being transported.
- Where the vehicles are located.
- The environmental conditions inside the cargo.
- Potential incidents occurring along the transportation route.
At the same time, transportation companies are often reluctant to share operational data due to concerns about confidentiality, liability, or competitive risk. As a result, critical information remains siloed across different organizations.
Research
Our research during the hackathon highlighted a particularly important gap: emergency response teams often have no direct access to live data about hazardous material shipments moving through their jurisdictions. Meanwhile, transportation companies also lack timely information about incidents occurring on the route ahead.
The core challenge therefore became clear: there was no shared, trusted, real-time information layer connecting transport vehicles, logistics operators, emergency services, insurers, and regulators.
The goal of the hackathon challenge was to design and prototype a system that could enable automatic, secure, and continuous information exchange between all parties involved in hazardous material transportation.
Solution
The Edgica team designed and implemented a prototype system combining IoT infrastructure, encrypted data distribution, and blockchain-based incentives to create a transparent and collaborative safety ecosystem.
Our concept focused on enabling secure real-time data sharing while ensuring that transportation companies maintain full control over their sensitive operational data. The solution consisted of several interconnected components:
IoT sensor layer
Transport vehicles were equipped with IoT devices based on Raspberry Pi and Arduino hardware platforms. These devices collected and transmitted key operational and environmental data, including: GPS coordinates of the vehicle, temperature conditions, gas concentration levels, radiation readings, other environmental indicators relevant to hazardous cargo.
These sensors continuously monitored transportation conditions and generated real-time telemetry data that could be used to detect anomalies or dangerous situations early.
Secure data distribution via IOTA
Sensor data was transmitted in encrypted form using IOTA’s Masked Authenticated Messaging (MAM) protocol. This allowed data to be securely published to a distributed ledger while maintaining strict access control.
The approach ensured that data remained tamper-resistant, only authorized stakeholders could access the information, transport companies retained ownership of their data, and information could be selectively shared with specific participants.
This created a decentralized but controlled information exchange infrastructure.
Blockchain-based incentive model
To encourage companies to participate in the ecosystem and share relevant data, the team implemented a blockchain-based incentive layer.
An Ethereum smart contract was developed to manage ERC-20 tokens representing participation in a “Safety Economy.” Transportation companies could earn tokens for sharing operational data and maintaining safe transportation practices.
This economic model created incentives for cooperation between participants:
- Transport companies benefit from tokens and potential insurance discounts.
- Insurance providers gain access to reliable transportation data, enabling more accurate risk assessment and dynamic pricing.
- Emergency responders receive real-time visibility into hazardous shipments.
- Authorities and infrastructure operators gain better situational awareness.
Real-time monitoring interface
A web-based map interface was developed to visualize the live movement of hazardous material shipments.
Authorized participants — including transportation companies, fire services, route authorities, and emergency responders — could monitor shipments in real time through an intuitive dashboard.
The interface allowed stakeholders to: track vehicle locations, view sensor readings, receive alerts about abnormal conditions, and identify hazardous shipments near incident locations.
This visibility significantly improves preparedness and response time during emergencies.
Result
Despite the complexity of the architecture, the team successfully developed a working MVP within the 48-hour hackathon timeframe.
The Edgica team successfully demonstrated a live working prototype at the end of the hackathon, showcasing the real-time data pipeline, secure data sharing, tokenized incentives, and visualization interface. The concept resonated strongly with both the jury and industry stakeholders.
The project ultimately won the Odyssey Hackathon 2019 competition, standing out among hundreds of participating teams for its practical applicability, technical architecture, and strong societal impact.
Beyond the competition result, the project generated significant interest from industry participants, including emergency services organizations, safety institutes, and logistics stakeholders. The discussions that followed validated both the technical feasibility and the commercial potential of the solution.
The hackathon also highlighted the importance of cross-sector collaboration in addressing complex safety challenges. By bringing together IoT engineering, blockchain technology, logistics expertise, and emergency response needs, the project demonstrated how modern technologies can improve transparency, coordination, and safety in hazardous material transportation.
Following the event, the team explored opportunities to further develop the concept together with stakeholders, with the goal of transforming the prototype into a production-ready system capable of improving safety across real-world transport networks.
Explore more
Hackster | Smart Transportation Demo
IOTA | IOTA at the Odyssey Hackathon 2019