Second WaPOR Hackathon: Communicating data for agricultural applications

The hackathon focuses on bringing together (social) scientists, engineers, programmers, communications specialists, and local experts to create real-world applications using WaPOR remote sensing derived data as standalone or combined with other data sources.

The focus is on advisory and communication to the agriculture sector using storytelling and linking WaPOR data to other data sources to enhance its applicability. The outputs could include mobile phone applications, GIS plug-ins, web maps, dashboards or whatever your creativity wants! This year’s main theme for the hackathon is “Communicating data for agricultural applications” and will work under the following subthemes 3 themes:

1. Story telling with WaPOR data
2. Linking WaPOR to other data sources (e.g. Internet of Things, Citizen science, remote sensing, etc)
3. Advisory and communication to the agriculture sector

Each team will develop an idea on how WaPOR data (in combination with other data sources) can be used to communicate on different topics or to provide advisory services to the agricultural sector. This will be done with support from a team of experts in various fields. After week 1 of the hackathon, each team will prepare a 1-minute video pitch for their concept to the jury who will select one winner from each theme. The winning teams have an extra week 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. The WaPOR portal, uses open-source data to provide near real-time spatial datasets for Africa and the Near East, and is now going global! The WaPOR data 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 and have it easily accessible for users.

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, processes, decision support systems, and more! We also want you to think out of the box and think of ways of using WaPOR data in ways that might have not been in the initial objective of WaPOR – think about storytelling, monitoring, communication and other.

Requirements

You can register with a team or sign up as an individual and be paired up with colleagues from around the world.

Requirements for registration: Basic knowledge of WaPOR.  We advise you to check the available course on WaPOR on IHE OpenCourseWare:

1. Water Productivity and Water Accounting using WaPOR (complete at least Module 1 of the course). This course is available in English (WaPOR (un-ihe.org)), French (WaPOR (un-ihe.org))  and Arabic (WaPOR[AR] (un-ihe.org)).
2. WaPOR Concepts and Validation, follow this link: WaPOR Concepts and Validation (un-ihe.org)

Registration

Registration will be open from 23 August 2023 till 25 September 2023

Professionals and students are encouraged to apply. See you at the hackathon!

Future events
Under the WaPOR project, one more hackathon will be planned for 2024. 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 organizers: wateraccounting_project@un-ihe.org