event 30 Nov 2022 time 00:00 16 Dec 2022 time 00:00 location online

WaPOR Hackathon 2022

Are you a hackathon expert? Or maybe you want to attend your first one? From 30 November until 16 December 2022 the “WaPOR Hackathon: Monitoring and Evaluating global challenges”, hosted by the WaPOR Project, is taking place.

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First WaPOR Hackathon: WaPOR for Monitoring and evaluation of global challenges

This hackathon is the first from a series of three hackathons which will follow in the coming 2 years. This hackathon focuses on bringing together (social) scientists, engineers, programmers, communications specialists, and local experts to create real-world applications using WaPOR remote sensing data (wapor.apps.fao.org). Outputs could include phone applications, GIS plug-ins, web maps, or whatever your creativity wants! The hackathon focused on 4 themes:

  • Environmental challenges (climate hazard, land degradation, ..)
  • Monitoring the SDGs
  • Tools to Validate WaPOR data
  • Social Inclusion, gender and equity

Each team will develop an idea on how WaPOR data can be used to solve a problem within one of the themes, with support from a team of experts in various fields. After 1 week, each team will pitch their concept to the jury who will select one winner from each theme. The winning teams will then have 10 days to develop their concept further with advice from industry experts. The final winning team will have the chance to have their product supported by the WaPOR Project for implementation!

Why this challenge?

The world faces many challenges brought on by our increasing demand for food, comfort, and a resource-intensive quality of life. Climates are changing, non-renewable resources are depleting and two of our most essential resources, land and water, are deteriorating. To tackle these challenges, there is much potential in using big data. For example, the WaPOR portal, uses open-source data to provide near real-time spatial datasets for Africa and the Near East (and now going global!) which can monitor agriculture, agricultural water consumption, water productivity, and much more. With all this data available, the challenge is how to put it into practice, ie. to put it to use in such a way that users can easily access and use the data that is of importance to them.
We want to challenge you to think of ways how to move from WaPOR data and other linked open data sets to useful, easy, and accessible technical applications - think of apps, QGIS-plugins, web-services, decision support systems, and more!

Important dates (livestream events)

  • Wednesday 30 November 2022 – Launch of the hackathon
  • Thursday 8 December 2022 – screening of team pitches and announcement of shortlisted teams
  • Friday 16 December 2022 - Closing event for the Hackathon (incl screening of pitches and announcement of final winner)

Registration

You can register with a team or sign up as an individual and be paired up with colleagues from around the world. No specific skills are required, but you must come prepared with an open mind and a commitment to all activities. Professionals and students are encouraged to apply. See you at the hackathon!

Please follow this link to register for the Hackathon – WaPOR Hackathon 2022

Future events

Under the WaPOR project, two more hackathons will be planned in the coming 2 years. Now with WaPOR going global, new opportunities will rise and new ideas will be needed for the future. We encourage you to follow the updates on WaPOR and stay tuned for new events.

The WaPOR project

Achieving Food Security in the future while using water resources in a sustainable manner is a major challenge for us and the next generations. Agriculture being a key water user, a careful monitoring of water productivity in this sector and exploring opportunities to increase it are required. The FAO has developed a publicly accessible near real time database using satellite data that allows the monitoring of agricultural water productivity at different scales. This database is the backbone of the WaPOR project that, now in its second phase, works with ten partner countries to build their capacity in the use of WaPOR data for its different applications, and to generate solutions to local challenges linked to water and land productivity as well as water management.

This hackathon is brought to you by the WaPOR Project partners, IHE Delft Institute for Water Education in collaboration with the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and International Water Management Institute (IWMI). This event is supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands.

Contact the organisers: wateraccounting_project@un-ihe.org

For more information on the hackathon, kindly check the WaPOR Hackathon homepage here.

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