For the first time citizens, communities, academics and technologists from all over the world will have access to some of the EU’s richest citizen generated environmental data, spanning the H2020 Citizen Observatory projects GROW Observatory, Groundtruth 2.0, Landsense and Scent.

Citizen Observatories are a series of projects where people across the world come together to monitor how their local areas and the planet are changing. The projects have engaged with tens of thousands of “citizen scientists” who assisted in gathering data at unprecedented scale for themes such as air and water quality, wildlife, land cover and soil.

The Open Data Challenge (ODC) is a competitive online event and tender for participating individuals/teams to innovate using open environmental data from Citizen Observatories. The winning ideas will generate new approaches, and innovative solutions using open data for the following social and environmental themes:

  1. Ecosystem monitoring: Phenology, biodiversity and land cover;
  2. Public infrastructure management – Soil Moisture and Drainage, Flood Mapping;
  3. Community-Based Disaster Management: Flood, Fire, Drought, Heatwave Services, Landslide;
  4. Regenerative food growing: yields, sustainable practices and natural pest control;
  5. Pollution monitoring and health: Water quality, air quality;
  6. Engaging young people on open data and climate: Education;
  7. Other: Innovative applications of WeObserve data e.g. COVID19

Key dates for the ODC are:

  • Registration opens: May 15, 2020;
  • Registration closes: June 15, 2020;  extended to June 21, 2020;
  • ODC Webinar: June 16, 2020;  you can access the recording and slides in the bottom of this page
  • Submission deadline: July 31, 2020;
  • Awards announcement: by August 31, 2020;
  • Awards demo: October 15, 2020

Two winning teams will be awarded €5,000 cash each. They will demonstrate their solutions to the EC during the WeObserve Conference in October 2020. For more information about the WeObserve ODC and how to apply, please visit the WeObserve website here.

Download the full press release here.

WeObserve Open Data Challenge Webinar

Download below the webinar’s presentations.