Copernicus Hackathon

CloudSigma Sponsors Second Edition Copernicus Hackathon Sofia 2020

CloudSigma is excited to sponsor the Second Edition Copernicus Hackathon Sofia 2020 that is going to take place virtually on April 24-May 8, 2020 as a part of Space Week Sofia 2020. CloudSigma is coming back for a second year in a row, as we were proud sponsors of the first edition of the Copernicus Hackathon Sofia.

Copernicus Hackathon2

The Sofia Hackathon events are a part of the Copernicus Hackathon Programme financed by the European Commission. They are organized by the Office for transfer of aerospace technologies (RST-TTO), the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (BAS) and the Center for Excellence –Universities for Science, Informatics and Technology in e-Society (CoE-UNITe). The goal of the Hackathon Programme is to bring together developers, entrepreneurs and topic-specific experts to develop new applications based on Copernicus Earth observation (EO) data and services. It enables people from all over Europe to explore many application fields on Earth with the free and open-source data from Copernicus.

Copernicus Hackathon Sofia 2020

This year, encouraged by the success of last year’s event, the organizers were set to give participants the opportunity to get acquainted with the latest technologies for Earth observation from space. The goal was to promote the potential of the Copernicus Earth observation data and services to address the communities in the Balkan region.

However, the current COVID-19 pandemic not only obstructed thе event but also put humanity before an unprecedented test. The pandemic proved once again how crucial the role of research and new technology in crisis situations is. For that reason, the organizers decided to dedicate this year’s remote Hackathon to helping society overcome the COVID-19 crisis.

Space Hacking of COVID-19

The goal of the second Sofia Copernicus Hackathon is to contribute to the efforts to tackle the global COVID-19 pandemic. Participants are going to apply their knowledge in the fields of information technologies, physics, mathematics, and Earth science during the virtual Hackathon. Ultimately, they will address the need to overcome the effects of this crisis through new ideas, products and initiatives, utilizing the potential of the Copernicus Earth observation data and services.

The Challenges of COVID-19

Teams will seek to develop innovative solutions in three themes related to the Copernicus Programme: Smart cities, Monitoring of the Danube and the Black Sea and Earth Observation & Artificial Intelligence for E-Government. Each of the main topics had been linked to an additional topic, related to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the use of Earth observation technologies. The winners of the Hackathon are going to receive a seat in the Copernicus Accelerator (a one-year coaching scheme organized by the European Commission).

CloudSigma Sponsorship

CloudSigma is thrilled to sponsor the virtual second edition of the Copernicus Hackathon organized in Bulgaria! We are going to provide participants with our services including:

    • Free cloud resources tailored to the needs of the Hackathon participants
    • Pre-installed image in CloudSigma’s drives library, containing EO tools such as SNAP, QGIS, Geoserver, Geonode and others:

EO Toolkit

In addition, CloudSigma is giving out a special prize to the winners of the Hackathon: a free annual subscription for the cloud worth 1000 EUR plus free access to the ever-expanding Sentinel-1 repository.

To get your free tailored account, please contact us at: satellite@cloudsigma.com.

UPDATE: We are happy to give an update that the Hackathon proved to be a great success with 60 participants matched- up in 8 teams competing for different prizes!

The winning team, Flash, ended up using CloudSigma data from Sentinel 1, 2 & 5. The team created a demo application called “DemoSat”- an online platform that compares air quality during the COVID-19 pandemic in four cities. CloudSigma’s special prize of 1000 EUR free annual subscription for our cloud platform went to team eoLocK. The joint UK/ Bulgaria team used CloudSigma data from Sentinel 2, 3 & 5. The project aimed to extract insights about how COVID-19 policy restrictions and lockdown measures affect air quality by overlapping earth observation data with the policy measures timeline.

CloudSigma and Earth Observation

CloudSigma has been sponsoring events in the area of Earth Observation for a while now. First, we have sponsored last year’s debut Copernicus Hackathon in Sofia. In addition, we are a recurrent sponsor of the Space Apps Challenge in Rome. We are offering support with free compute resources for Space Apps participants to use while developing their groundbreaking innovations. Moreover, we have sponsored the Earth Observation Exploitation Platform Hackathon, organized by The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and the European Space Agency (ESA).

Our work in the area of Earth Observation allows us to offer a combination between CloudSigma’s powerful computing environment and a repository of Sentinel S-1 SLC data. In fact, CloudSigma’s completely open software layer is especially conducive to such challenges. This is because it lets competitors configure and deploy whatever they need. We offer a truly flexible cloud platform especially suitable for research, data and inventions.

CloudSigma is happy to contribute to utilizing the potential of the Copernicus Earth observation data and services to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic. During this time of crisis, we have put in place the necessary measures to ensure the continued operational integrity of our services. At the same time, we realize that we can do more in our part to combat COVID-19.

We believe that technology, cloud computing, and Earth observation are powerful allies that can help tackle the crisis. We hope that the outcomes of the Hackathon will have widespread and long-standing benefits for businesses and for society at large.

For more information on the Second Edition Copernicus Hackathon Sofia 2020 and how you can register for participation, visit:
https://hackathon.rst-tto.com/en#about

We wish all participants the best of luck!

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About Zhenya Mocheva

Zhenya is a Digital Marketing Expert at CloudSigma, focusing on brand strategy, social media marketing and digital marketing campaigns. She is passionate about the continuous innovation within the digital environment and the endless growth opportunities that inbound marketing brings.