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Saab Global

National Missing Persons Hackathon win

2 min read

In an Australian-first event of its kind, a Saab Australia team from Adelaide has taken out first place in the Australian National Missing Persons Hackathon.

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The participants in this inaugural event were tasked with researching open-source platforms and material to gather information on twelve missing persons.

The challenge attracted 354 participants who gathered across 10 Australian locations in Canberra, Sydney, Brisbane, Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast, Darwin, Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne and Hobart.

Information found and submitted throughout the six-hour long challenge will be provided to the Australian Federal Police to hopefully find new leads that may potentially solve one or many of these cases.

The Adelaide-based 'SaabAU' team from Saab Australia placed first out of 96 teams and won by an impressive 2,000 points.

Congratulations to Andrew Bailey, Ben Cornish, Adam McHugh and Luke Smith (pictured above left to right) for the win and finding the 97 pieces of information they submitted for the challenge.

Throughout the hackathon around 100 new pieces of information was being uncovered every ten minutes.

More than 38,000 people go missing in Australia each year and whilst most are located quickly, around 2600 still haven’t been found after three months.

The National Missing Persons Hackathon was hosted by AustCyber with the support of the Australian Federal Police.

This was the first event of its kind to be held in Australia. Similar events have been held by Trace Labs in the United States and Canada and have led to missing persons’ cases being solved.

Further information

More information about the Hackathon can be found at: https://bit.ly/32bRjYg. For more information on the winners, please contact Mandy Barlow, Senior Marketing Communications Adviser at Saab Australia on 8343 3766 or 0430 775 004.