A leading geospatial developer platform and marketplace and its parent company Airbus are teaming up for the Copernicus Masters Challenge. Their Sustainable Urban Planning Challengefocuses on remote sensing for better decision-making.
The most prestigious Earth Observation (EO) annual competition in the world, Copernicus Masters aims to foster innovative applications of remotely sensed data that address Earth’s pressing environmental, social, and business problems.
The European Commission and other international public entities have established several urban planning development projects to address critical issues connected to sprawl, such as unemployment, segregation, and poverty. UP42 and Airbus are now calling on developers and researchers worldwide to create algorithms and analyses that can provide decision-makers with better quantitative information, with special emphasis on ecology.
“We are on a mission to democratize Earth observation data and insights,” said Sean Wiid, CEO at UP42. “We want to offer urban planning experts and decision-makers easier access to data to develop and scale solutions more rapidly, removingtechnical and commercial barriers that can slow down progress in making cities and communities greener and more liveable by 2030.”
In the same spirit of sustainability, last year’s winners, Thetaspace, developed CloudlessEO – an algorithm that relies on Deep Learning technology to remove clouds in optical satellite imagery and help address environmental issues in tropical areas.
QUALITATIVE AND QUANTITATIVE INFORMATION
With an increasing need for data points and quantitative analysis to support planners in effectively making cities more sustainable by considering a city’s entire ecosystem, remote sensing is a critical tool for performing an in-depth analysis at scale. However, recent studies show that the level of integration between remote sensing, urban planning, and ecology is still limited, “with only 12% of the papers fully integrating ecology, remote sensing, and planning while 24% of the studies use specific methods from one domain only.”
Developers who take on the UP42 Airbus Challenge have a significant opportunity to design solutions that will have a tangible impact on the race to sustainability by 2030.
“We are excited to once again take part in this new edition of the Copernicus Masters. Sustainable Urban Planning is key to facing the evolutions of climate change, and we are eager to find creative partners to develop innovative solutions which will have a positive impact on the environment and society through this new challenge,” said Matthieu Lys, Head of Innovation Management, Airbus Defence and Space.
EVALUATION AND PRIZES
The UP42 Airbus Copernicus Masters Challenge on Sustainable Urban Planning aims to develop algorithms or methodologies that use remote sensing to quantify critical issues emerging from the expansion of historic centers toward modern suburbs.
Participants are encouraged to tackle use cases that leverage UP42’s most diverse data, including but not limited to the following:
• The increasing number of structures that have an impact on non-renewable resources (water, vegetation, land)
• The uneven distribution of green sites
• Wasted spaces to be repurposed as green or residential areas
During the submission phase, all participants will get access to industry-leading geospatial.