hackathon

Space Apps Hackathon 2022 in Ottawa and Canada

2022-09-29 by Deploy_Admin

Deploy Solutions is proud to be a continued organizer of the sixth annual Space Apps Ottawa hackathon event, which is the local version of the global (and highly popular) NASA International Space Apps Challenge. That event is now celebrating 11 years!

This FREE and entirely VIRTUAL event will run from Friday evening, September 30 to Sunday, October 2. The weekend hackathon provides a fun and creative introduction to the world of open source and space industry projects.

The solutions to the challenges rely on publicly available open sourced data from NASA, the Canadian Space Agency, and ten other international space agencies and organizations.

This year’s event will once again be held virtually in Ottawa. Find out more, including how to register, at https://www.spaceappsottawa.com.

Deploy Proudly Supports 2021 Space Apps Hackathon in Ottawa and Canada

2021-09-26 by Deploy_Admin

Deploy Solutions is proud to be a continued organizer and sponsor of the fifth annual Space Apps Ottawa hackathon event, which is the local version of the global (and highly popular) NASA International Space Apps Challenge. That event is now celebrating 10 years!

2021 marks the tenth annual NASA International Space Apps Challenge. In honor of this event, the theme is, “The Power of Ten.” This year, NASA will commemorate ten amazing years of community, collaboration, and innovation by forming a power team of ten international space agencies, including our own Canadian Space Agency, who’ll work together to make Space Apps accessible to more communities worldwide. This FREE and entirely VIRTUAL event will run from Friday evening, October 1 to Sunday, October 3. Find out more, including how to register, at https://www.spaceappsottawa.com.

The solutions to the challenges rely on publicly available open sourced data from NASA, the Canadian Space Agency, and eight other international space agencies and organizations.

Each year this event is provides a fun and creative introduction to the world of open source and space industry projects. Due to COVID-19, this year’s event will be entirely virtual.

See you there!

Deploy Sponsors Space Apps Ottawa 2020

2020-09-16 by Deploy_Admin

Another year, another space apps hackathon!

Deploy Solutions is proud to be a continued organizer and sponsor of the fourth annual Space Apps Ottawa hackathon event, which is the local version of the global (and highly popular) NASA International Space Apps Challenge.

Ottawa, prepare for liftoff! The NASA International Space Apps Challenge is an intense 48-hour global weekend hackathon for developers, designers, engineers, entrepreneurs, astronomers and enthusiasts. Along with nearly 200 cities around the world, Ottawa teams will form and build products and prototypes against NASA- and CSA-designed challenges that leverage spacecraft, celestial and science data. This FREE and entirely VIRTUAL event will run from Friday evening, October 2 to Sunday, October 4. Find out more, including how to register, at http://www.spaceappsottawa.com.

The solutions to the challenges rely on publicly available open sourced data from NASA, the Canadian Space Agency, and other international space agencies and organizations.

Each year this event is provides a fun and creative introduction to the world of open source and space industry projects. Due to COVID-19, this year’s event will be entirely virtual.

See you there!

COVID-19 Special Edition Hackathon, and Impact on Space Apps Ottawa 2020

2020-05-24 by Deploy_Admin

Space Apps Challenge – COVID-19 Special Edition

NASA will hold a virtual Covid-19 Special Edition of the Space Apps Challenge on the weekend of May 30-31. This is in addition to the annual event which will still be held in October. You will find more information about the special edition event here.

The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) will take this opportunity to release data from MOPITT and Radarsat 2 satellites in the hope that participants across Canada and elsewhere will use them to tackle one of the Covid-19 challenges.

Space Apps Ottawa 2020: Online Only?

Our first concern is to hold our annual event in a way that is not only fun, inspiring, and educational, but safe and secure for all participants.

COVID-19 pandemic will require us to comply with new public safety regulations and bylaws and there is an enormous amount of uncertainty about what October might look like. We may not be able to physically hold this event.

Having said that – our hackathon is still a go!

The organizing committee has begun to plan for a version of this event that will be primarily virtual / online. We will provide updates when we know more.

Register now to help us plan your hackathon experience

Although event details are uncertain, it will be held October 2 to 4 as originally planned.

Please register online in order to ensure your space and allow us to provide you with the best possible experience. In addition, if you would like to assist with sponsorship, volunteering, organizing, or mentoring; or have feedback or suggestions on what a great online hackathon experience could look like, please email us at info@spaceappsottawa.com or contact me directly on LinkedIn.

We hope you will join us for another great year solving “out of this world” challenges in a fun (and now virtual) environment!

Space Apps Hackathons

2020-01-26 by Deploy_Admin

Project Overview

NASA has been organizing the International Space Apps hackathon since 2012. It is now considered the world's largest hackathon. In 2019, there were nearly 30,000 participants in 230 locations in 80 countries.

Canada's space hackathon history is quite hard to pin down. Initially the events here were simply the local versions of the NASA events.

The first Ottawa hackathon began in 2017. That year, the Canadian federal government began to support our local events (led by the Canadian Space Agency).

Deploy Software Solutions is an inaugural founder and proud co-organizer of Space Apps Ottawa.

Project Goals & Objectives

NASA has stated its hackathon goals are to:

Exemplify principles of transparency, participation and collaboration
Utilize openly available data, supplied through NASA and CSA missions and technology
Utilize the talent and skill of passionate volunteers from around the planet
Advance space exploration and improve the quality of life on Earth

The Canadian Space Agency is the primary federal organization supporting Space Apps in Canada, assisted by others such as Natural Resources Canada.

Their 2019 data strategy includes community engagements, such as hackathons, to facilitate the use of data and access to science. One major goal is to raise awareness of their mandate and missions, while another is to support Canada's Open Government Initiative.

Project Results

Over a 48-hour period, participants form teams to pick and solve a posted challenge. Although this isn't enough time to produce a production-ready system, it is plenty to come up with creative solutions that explore and de-risk future development.

Businesses are frequently unaware of availability of space-based data sets, unsure how to leverage them, or it is prohibitive to proceed.

Major software failure factors are:

unclear business requirements
lengthy development or planning times
lack of agile process
Deferring risks
Lack of end user engagement and change management

These all appear to be major risk factors currently for downstream software development. Therefore, any activity that can help reduce these failure factors is worthwhile.

Kevin Jones from PCI Geomatics wrote a great blog about a software prototype created at last year's event, "Hacking to Liberate RADARSAT-1 Data". It provides insight into how hackathons work and why they are a beneficial way to reduce software development risk, cost, and duration.

We believe space apps hackathons have positive benefits to society as well:

Space investment is generally a GDP multiplier. Space Apps is a low-cost and low-risk way of getting outreach for space.
They raise awareness with businesses that are not (currently) space-enabled
They increase STEM and design skills (including in youth and under-represented groups)
They promote job creation and growth
They promote science and open data
They tap into a wealth of design, development, AI, big data experience in other industries

View New Horizon Presentation (PDF)
History of Space Apps hackathon internationally and in Canada.
Visit NASA Space Apps Challenge Website
Visit the international website for the event.
Visit Space Apps Ottawa website
Visit the website to learn more and register for our Ottawa events.
Read "Hacking to Liberate RADARSAT-1 Data"
Blog post on Go Geomatics Canada: "How four individuals came together at the recent Ottawa Space Apps Challenge to create intuitive access to the RADARSAT-1 Catalog"

Space Apps Hackathon 2022 in Ottawa and Canada

2022-09-29

Deploy Solutions is proud to be a continued organizer and sponsor of the sixth annual Space Apps Ottawa hackathon event, which is the local version of the global (and highly popular) NASA International Space Apps Challenge.

2021-09-26

Deploy Solutions is proud to be a continued organizer and sponsor of the fifth annual Space Apps Ottawa hackathon event, which is the local version of the global (and highly popular) NASA International Space Apps Challenge.

2021-07-01

GeoIgnite 2021: Deploy Solutions Unveil New Citizen-Focused Climate Change Software Prototype

2020-12-19

As a proud Canadian and lifelong space enthusiast, Deploy Solutions Founder Nick Kellett recently took the opportunity to present at the Canadian Space Society’s Annual Space Summit — Canada’s foremost space science, research and technology conference. Nick’s presentation, “Space Apps in Canada: 2020 and Beyond”, gave conference attendees an overview of Space Apps hackathons, annual […]

2020-11-30

At GeoIgnite2020, CEO Nick Kellett talked about the benefits and potential of a software factory approach to building GIS and space apps.

2020-09-16

Deploy Solutions is proud to be a continued organizer and sponsor of Space Apps Ottawa, the local version of the NASA International Space Apps Challenge.

RADARSAT-1 Liberators

2019-12-24 by Nicholas Kellett

Project Overview

For 17 years, Canada's RADARSAT-1 earth observation satellite obtained radar images of the Earth's surface. Many of these images remain unprocessed and there is no easy way for interested users to examine the location and availability of currently unprocessed images.

During the Space Apps Ottawa 2019 hackathon, a team of four volunteers tackled a Canadian Space Agency/Natural Resource Canada challenge. The goal was to automate and improve searches on the Government of Canada EODMS system and then position RADARSAT-1 image locations and metadata on a world map, to allow users to easily view and filter against the whole Earth Observation data set.

Project Goals & Objectives

The goal of CSA and NRCan (Natural Resources Canada) is to make more RADARSAT-1 data available. Currently only 2% is processed and open to the public. To reduce high processing costs, the CSA would like to identify and prioritize datasets that could be useful for research purposes.

Because this project was a direct response to a hackathon challenge they posed, it has a single SMART objective: solve the challenge.

The objective is to solve CSA/NRCan's RADARSAT Challenge.

Specific: "Realtor.ca, for RADARSAT-1". Create a script to automate searches in the EODMS database and display the results on a map.
Measurable: A website must allow users to perform EODMS searches with filters, and display real data results and EO imagery metadata on a world map.
Achievable: Work is limited to proof of concept including some hard-coded and manual steps to demonstrate "art of the possible".
Rewarding: Project will demonstrate significantly improved and intuitive EODMS search experience and solve a real challenge posed by CSA and NRCan.
Time-bound: POC must be completed within 48-hours of project start.

Project Results

Team members (from a variety of organizations). L to R: Kevin Jones, Nick Kellett, Adam Simonini, Alan Higginson

Over a 48-hour period, our volunteer team (from several different companies, including Deploy) created a working website composed of:

Front end search website using Vue.js and MapBox, served by node.js
GeoJSON REST API middleware using C#
Geospatial Metadata database using Postgres and PostGIS.
GeoJSON extract and intake process from the EODMS system to our metadata database

The resulting proof of concept was well received by CSA and NRCan, subsequently winning the challenge category in Ottawa and then nationally.

We can provide a demo of the working system, upon request. The code is open source under Apache 2 and also available upon request.

One of our team-members Kevin Jones wrote a great blog about the development effort, "Hacking to Liberate RADARSAT-1 Data". It also provides good insight into how hackathons work and why they are a beneficial way to reduce software development risk, cost, and duration.

View Hackathon Presentation (PDF)
Detailed overview of the solution, as presented during the Space Apps Ottawa 2019 hackathon.
Clone front-end code from GitHub
Download or clone the web front-end portion of the solution, from GitHub.
Clone back-end code from GitHub
Download or clone the admin/back-end portion of the solution, from GitHub.
Read "Hacking to Liberate RADARSAT-1 Data"
Blog post on Go Geomatics Canada: "How four individuals came together at the recent Ottawa Space Apps Challenge to create intuitive access to the RADARSAT-1 Catalog"

Space Apps Hackathon 2022 in Ottawa and Canada

2022-09-29

2021-09-26

2021-07-01

GeoIgnite 2021: Deploy Solutions Unveil New Citizen-Focused Climate Change Software Prototype

2020-12-19

2020-11-30

At GeoIgnite2020, CEO Nick Kellett talked about the benefits and potential of a software factory approach to building GIS and space apps.

2020-09-16

Deploy Solutions is proud to be a continued organizer and sponsor of Space Apps Ottawa, the local version of the NASA International Space Apps Challenge.

A New Horizon – Space Apps in Canada

2019-11-29 by Nicholas Kellett

In October Deploy Software Solutions was an organizing sponsor of the third annual Space Apps Ottawa hackathon, which is the local branch of the global (and highly popular) NASA International Space Apps Challenge. The event is

…an intense 48-hour global weekend hackathon for developers, designers, engineers, entrepreneurs, astronomers and enthusiasts. Along with nearly 200 cities around the world, Ottawa teams will form and build products and prototypes against NASA-designed challenges that leverage spacecraft, celestial and science data.

This is a fun introduction to the world of open source projects and the space industry. The challenges are designed by both NASA and our own Canadian Space Agency. Solutions to the challenges rely on NASA’s publicly available open sourced data and require teamwork and creativity!

At this year’s Canadian Space Society annual summit, CEO Nicholas Kellett had a chance to speak about the opportunity Space Apps hackathons can play in Canada’s space industry. The presentation, called “A New Horizon: Space Apps in Canada” provided a

…satellite-eye view of hackathons and space apps globally and in Canada. What are they, what business problems and technical challenges can they solve, what is their history and how can the Canadian space industry leverage them to achieve downstream software excellence?

View the full presentation on SlideShare.

hackathon

Space Apps Challenge – COVID-19 Special Edition

Space Apps Ottawa 2020: Online Only?

Register now to help us plan your hackathon experience

Project Overview

Project Goals & Objectives

Project Results

At a Glance

View New Horizon Presentation (PDF)

Visit NASA Space Apps Challenge Website

Visit Space Apps Ottawa website

Read "Hacking to Liberate RADARSAT-1 Data"

Related

2022-09-29

2021-09-26

2021-07-01

2020-12-19

2020-11-30

2020-09-16

Project Overview

Project Goals & Objectives

The objective is to solve CSA/NRCan's RADARSAT Challenge.

Project Results

At a Glance

View Hackathon Presentation (PDF)

Clone front-end code from GitHub

Clone back-end code from GitHub

Read "Hacking to Liberate RADARSAT-1 Data"

Related

2022-09-29

2021-09-26

2021-07-01

2020-12-19

2020-11-30

2020-09-16