Jan Boeckmann from the Institute for Business Analytics and Technology Transformation together with his former PhD supervisor Clemens Thielen from Technical University of Munich won the EURO Prize for the Common Good at this year’s EURO conference in Kopenhagen. The prize was awarded for their project on utilizing optimization algorithms to compute precautionary concepts for pluvial flash floods, which are increasing in both intensity and frequency as a consequence of climate change. With their developed algorithms, which are made available to municipalities through a web-application, over 30 institutions from all over Germany have already actively computed precautionary concepts. At JKU, Mr. Boeckmann currently develops an improved version of the software that connects to open data, which will make the software available beyond Germany.

EURO is the "Association of European Operational Research Societies" and is a regional grouping within IFORS, the "International Federation of Operational Research Societies". Its aim is to promote Operational Research (OR) throughout Europe. OR societies from more than 35 countries are members of EURO and there are over 50 different working groups focusing on different research and application areas within EURO. In 2020 EURO introduced the EURO Prize for OR for the Common Good (EPOCG). This prize shall honour outstanding accomplishments of OR for solving social-oriented problems. Contributions with a global scope and a wide range of potential applications are preferred.