6th Plenary Climate Change Data Challenge

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19 April 2015 15648 reads

 

The 6th Plenary RDA hosted in Paris from 23-25 September 2015, features a special focus on research data for climate change, leveraging on the UN Climate Change Conference (COP21) to be held in Paris in December 2015.

 

As a part of this special focus Cap Digital & RDA have created a special Data Challenge designed to connect Climate Change related Data Sets with startups, SMEs and larger organizations with practical application for these data. 

 

 

A wealth of datasets from different global organisations have been made available to enterprises for the creation of novel and innovative solutions in areas covering Air quality, energy and urban activity. The second phase of the challenge was focused on the Enterprise & Academic Engagement.

Climate Data Challenge for Enterprise

The vision of the Research Data Alliance is for researchers and innovators to openly share data across technologies, disciplines, and countries to address the grand challenges of society. One of these grand challenges is understanding and responding appropriately to rapid climate change. This is a challenge that will require the use of big data from climate models and satellite remote sensing as well as more bespoke data on specific climatic and social phenomena. It will require these data to be integrated in new ways that allow for the understanding and prediction of complex systems, but it will also require a deeper understanding of individual and societal responses to both expected and unanticipated change.

Private enterprise from many sectors has a critical interest and an especially important role to play in addressing this challenge. For example, insurance companies will need to develop better and more responsive risk models. Agriculturalists will need to modify predictions of crop yields and will need to develop new varieties better adapted to more extreme climate. Water managers and hydro companies will need to respond to radically different and variable precipitation patterns. Engineering firms will need to develop new, adaptive approaches to coastal flooding. And the list goes on.

The Research Data Alliance wants to accelerate these adaptations and challenges data scientists and enterprise to address these problems. We issue a challenge to demonstrate novel ways to integrate diverse data for new understanding using technologies, systems, or practices developed by RDA. We challenge private sector partners and academic organisations to use open data made available by a wide range of global RDA members and other organisations to address real and developing problems emerging from rapid climate change. Participants will be judged on the novelty of their approach, the range and diversity of data used (from both natural and social sciences), and the use of RDA technologies and practices. The 3 finalists of the challenge will be invited to present their solutions during the COP21 conference in Paris, December 2015.

 

Meet the candidates

 

ADOME, France

The ADOME project is focused social and innovative media for COP 21 and Climate Initiatives.

BreedIT ltd, Israel

BreedIT ltd is developing intelligent decision support software to optimize the work done in breeding of new varieties of vegetables and other crops.

Göteborg University, Department of Marine Sciences, Sweden

The goal of the initiative is  that researchers, authorities, and consultant companies will use the platform in the future to predict the abundance and outbreaks of invasive species as well as pathogens such as mosquito-borne diseases based on landscape features, climate, biology as well as socio-economic data.

Meso-Star SAS, France

The Eco-districts the heart of energy and environmental issues. Meso-Star will develop the tools that will allow the building actors, ofrenewable energy, of transport infrastructure and network, the architects and urban planners to design together  more eficient eco-districts using climate data available.

Plume Labs, France

Plume Labs helps citizens learn, track and forecast what they breathe in order to beat air pollution and lower their exposure to the world’s largest single environmental risk (source: WHO). They are building the Plume Air Report, a free mobile app that provides live air quality forecasts for 60+ major cities around the world, based on open air quality data sources worldwide.

Vizonomy, United States

Vizonomy is making the climate risk assessment process more accessible to any U.S. community that is at risk to sea level rise or ooding. Vizonomy is doing this by leveraging +80 federal, state, and local datasets (e.g. NOAA Sea Level Rise Scenarios, FEMA oodplains, DHS critical infrastructure, etc) along with OpenStreet Map and open source mapping software.

 

 


The Research Data Alliance 6th Plenary Meeting will be held in Paris, France - 22 - 25 September 2015.