Blue Marble image of the Earth taken by the crew of Apollo 17 on Dec. 7 1972.
Image Credit: NASA
The global Space Apps COVID-19 Challenge was announced recently. This will be a virtual hackathon over forty-eight hours where teams from across the planet will get together to use Earth Observation data to propose solutions to the challenges we are facing surrounding the impact of COVID-19.
This is based on the annual Space Apps hackathon NASA has hosted each year since 2012, which takes place at a variety of venues around the world. The 2019 event involved almost thirty thousand people in seventy-one countries, who between them developed over two thousand applications using EO data to support the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. It’s an event that we know well, as two years ago Sam was a keynote speaker and a judge at one such event at City College, Plymouth.
This special virtual hackathon is being co-ordinated by NASA, ESA and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), and will take place on the weekend of Saturday 30th and Sunday 31st May. Â The challenge will have four themes surrounding COVID-19, and using open data to help:
- Learning about the virus and its spread using space-based data
- Local response/change and solutions
- Impacts of COVID-19 on the Earth system/Earth system response
- Economic opportunity, impact, and recovery during and following COVID-19
The teams at a hackathon are made up of a wide range of people with diverse skillsets, and it’s not necessary to have EO experience before the event. These events are designed for people to bring new skills, new thinking and new ideas to EO. With everyone at home, this could be a great opportunity for friends and family to come together as teams, and provide lots of different backgrounds and skillsets to approach the issue from a new angle!
Even if you don’t have a team at home, once the competition is open in the middle of May there will be an opportunity in the chat forums to link up with other people and teams can be formed there! Who knows you could find your teammates could be on the other side of the world. Keep an eye on the website for registrations to open.
NASA, ESA and JAXA will be making EO data available from a variety of their missions. The competition is also supported by EuroDataCube who will help scale up the best ideas, meaning this offers the potential to make a real-life difference to the battle against COVID-19!
In previous blogs we’ve shown how the restrictions on movement are influencing weather forecasting, allowing the natural world to populate urban areas and how the flora of the planet is continuing to grow. So there is a lot of things happening that you can take inspiration from. Do you have a good idea that could be developed in the hackathon? Why not have a go?
