The Data Science Challenges (https://www.datasciencechallenge.org/) have been launched today the 3rd April 2017 and are sponsored by the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) as well as a number of other UK government departments. The challenges are designed to encourage the brightest minds in data science to help solve real-world problems. Entrants will also be able to track their progress using live leader boards. The top three entrants in each challenge will share a £40,000 prize fund.
The Data Science Challenge begins with two separate competitions that will test the participants’ ability to mine large unstructured datasets to extract useful information:
SAFE PASSAGE: DETECTING AND CLASSIFYING VEHICLES IN AERIAL IMAGERY
Being able to automatically detect and categorise vehicles in aerial imagery will dramatically improve how quickly we can assess and identify them. This challenge asks participants to detect and classify vehicles such as buses, cars and motorbikes, from a set of aerial images.
GROWING INSTABILITY: CLASSIFYING CRISIS REPORTS
Analysing data in documents such as media reports can provide a better understanding of a potential crisis situation, growing instability in a particular region or, specific theme such as terrorism. Using news material, this challenge asks participants to predict topic tags for classifying unseen reports so that they can be used to improve awareness and understanding.