Imagine being able to count every car in every city, monitor illegal elephant poaching from your couch, or measure the total area of solar panels on the planet. Geospatial big data is an emerging industry, with nearly a billion dollars in cash flowing into satellite imagery and analytics startups in just the last three years. The question on everyone's mind is: In all those pixels, what will we see?
Big Pixel Hackathon
Saturday, May 23, 2015
10am - 5pm
Calit2 Theater, Atkinson Hall
Register!
On May 23, the Big Pixel Initiative at UC San Diego, a collaboration of the Qualcomm Institute and the newly-rechristened School of Global Policy and Strategy (GPS, previously IR/PS), will stage a day-long hackathon featuring three $500 cash prizes and opportunities to land mini-grants worth between $1,000 and $3,000 each for ongoing projects in geospatial big data. So far roughly 40 graduate and undergraduate students have registered to participate in the hackathon, with an expected top number of 75 students divided into teams that will have access to earth data sets supplied free of charge from the DigitalGlobe Basemap, the largest private collection of high-resolution satellite and aerial images (pictured) of the earth. Participants are invited to build apps that make unique use of the big pixel data.
The Big Pixel Initiative is developing geospatial capacity to address our world's greatest challenges at scale, and organizers are looking to students for smart, early-stage multidisciplinary ideas. While coding is not required, early proof-of-concept work will increase competitiveness. Students are encouraged to bring their own laptops and to use the software platform of their choosing. Support stations will be provided for students to tap into industry-standard GIS software (ArcGIS, etc.).
The Initiative has partnered with the Digital Globe Foundation to grow a living, learning laboratory related to everything spatial, to investigate and design best practices in geospatial data visualization user experience interfaces, and design techniques for scientific discovery and decision-making.
Register to participate in the Big Pixel Hackathon.
Learn more about the Big Pixel Initiative at UC San Diego.