Skip to content

Second EOvation hackathon in Poland

Between the 26th and 27th of May in Gdansk an EOVation event was held. This hackathon focused on the use of Earth Observation data for applications in the Middle East and South Asia

Between the 26th and 27th of May in Gdansk an EOVation event was held. This hackathon focused on the use of Earth Observation data for applications in the Middle East and South Asia.

Since November 2016 the EOClimLab project is being realised in Poland, Czech Republic and Romania. The project is commissioned by ESA. It’s purpose is to use satellite data for a better or new perspective on the subject of climate change. Among several activities within the project, also hackathons are organised by the consortium. These events are called EOvations and gather not only programmers and engineers or Earth Observation (EO) specialists but also representatives from other fields, including humanities and enthusiasts. Together, participants of EOvations have to create a preliminary application concept in a short amount of time (ca. 24 hours).

Oriental hackaton

On the 26th and 27th of May the second Polish hackathon was held under the EOClimLab project in Gdańsk. This event, called “Oriental EOvation” was devoted to the use of EO data in the Middle East and Asia in the context of regional problems related to climate change.

Team work was carried out with the support of scientific, technical and business-investment experts. There were several preliminary challenges available for participants to choose from. These challenges concerned, inter alia, the issue of rising sea levels, the drought-related situations in the Middle East and the relationship between man and the surrounding environment.

At the start of the hackathon four teams were formed. Two of them after several hours decided to join forces, creating a new team.

Results of Oriental EOvation hackathon

After 24 hours of intensive work, on the 27th of May, in the afternoon the teams presented their results. There were three solutions, one of which was more hardware based and the other two focused mainly on data processing from Earth Observation satellites.

The “Syrian Rebuild Map” team was selected as a winner. This team proposed the use of several different satellite-data indicators to assess and prioritize the reconstruction of individual Syrian regions after the ongoing civil war. The application showed trends of places where drought will continue as well as places where it will be possible to develop agriculture more optimally. Members of this team demonstrated the basic features of the future application, which was appreciated by the jury.

The other two teams also achieved some results. The other proposed two concepts focused on optimizing pipelines of desalination water from the Gulf of Aqaba into Jordan and a general hardware + data flood warning system.

All teams have been rewarded with vouchers, time to work with experts, access to a satellite data cloud, access to office space and a set of microelectronic circuits and sensors.

The event was organised by Blue Dot Solutions in support of the Black Pearls VC Fund, the Gdańsk University of Technology Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, the O4 Coworking, the Nauka o Klimacie webservice, and the EO Cloud Technological Partner.

Next hackathons in Poland

The next dedicated hackathons under the EOClimLab project in Gdańsk will take place in the second half of this year. This time the subject will be the use of Earth Observation data for the Pomeranian region. In Warsaw, an EOvation hackathon also took place on the 3rd – 4th of June.

The consortium of the EOCLimLab from Poland is composed of Omnilogy, Blue Dot Solutions, Orange, Integrated Solutions and Kapitech. On the Czech side the partners are Czech Invest and SpaceSystems Czech, and on the Romanian side there are three IT partners: Arobs Transilvania Software, Aries Transilvania and Indeco Soft.

Source