Air pollution is the world’s largest environmental health risk, contributing to 7 million premature deaths globally each year, and poor people in developing countries are the most heavily affected. Low-cost IoT sensor networks on the ground have the potential to close the climate data gaps in sub-Saharan Africa, but networks are expensive to implement and maintain in African cities.

Satellite-derived PM2.5 estimates based on Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) and machine learning techniques can be used to estimate pollution levels over large areas to help develop interventions such as vulnerability risk profiles for urban spaces, health preservation and environmental protection for affected populations, as well as community empowerment, and climate change mitigation.

In this challenge, you are asked to estimate PM2.5 levels from satellite observations based on Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) for eight cities in seven African countries - Lagos, Accra, Nairobi, Yaounde, Bujumbura, Kisumu, Kampala, and Gulu - with varying ground monitoring resolutions, using appropriate machine learning algorithms. Ground-based observations in the selected cities will be used to validate the satellite estimates.

The models you create will be deployed through AirQo’s user-friendly digital platform (http://platform.airqo.net), which empower communities to access crucial air quality information, providing them with the evidence needed to tackle local pollution challenges, improve public health, and achieve environmental justice.

About AirQo (airqo.net)

AirQo is a research initiative at Makerere University. We empower communities across Africa with accurate, hyperlocal, and timely air quality data to drive air pollution mitigation actions. With support from Google, we have developed a network of 300+ low-cost devices in 16+ African cities in Uganda, Kenya, Nigeria, Madagascar, Ghana, Senegal, Cameroon, Burundi, South Africa, and Mozambique. We have developed custom-built digital tools, including a platform and a Mobile App that empower individuals and duty-bearers with timely access to air quality trends, patterns, and insights to inform data-driven decisions to tackle air pollution.

About Mozilla Foundation (foundation.mozilla.org)

The Mozilla Foundation works to ensure the internet remains a public resource that is open and accessible to us all. We invest in bold ideas, global leaders, and the convening and campaign power of people. For more than two decades, we’ve worked across borders, disciplines, and technologies to fuel a movement to realize the full potential of the internet.

What We Do

Rally Citizens

Issues around the health of the internet impact us all. Mozilla empowers consumers to demand better online privacy, trustworthy artificial intelligence, and safe online experiences from Big Tech and governments.

Connect Leaders

Mozilla supports activists and thought leaders shaping the future of our online lives, advocating for a better internet. We provide funding, mentorship, and connection to a growing community of leaders and innovators.

Shape the Agenda

The internet is a vast ecosystem. Mozilla’s research — from our annual Internet Health Report to our white papers — make sense of all of it. We investigate threats to a healthy internet, from the explosion of online tracking, to increasing internet shutdowns, to the advent of deepfakes. But we also highlight bright spots and provide solutions, from the potential of open data to nascent social media cooperatives.

Mozilla’s research, like its products, is open-source. It’s built with input from experts across the globe. And it’s free for others to re-publish, remix, and use in their own campaigns and curricula.

The evaluation metric for this competition is Root Mean Squared Error.

For every row in the dataset, submission files should contain 2 columns: ID and Target.

Your submission file should look like this (numbers to show format only):

ID              pm2_5

ID_R5NC9JJMTW    60.5

ID_T5ASAWVP3C    58.1

ID_Q2M86L00CH    54.2

Competition closes on 16 June 2024.

Final submissions must be received by 11:59 PM GMT.

We reserve the right to update the contest timeline if necessary.

1st Place: $1 500 USD

2nd Place: $900 USD

3rd Place: $600 USD

There are 3 000 Zindi points available. You can read more about Zindi points here.

The winners will also be interviewed by AirQo for a 3-month contract to implement the developed solutions. AirQo has allocated $3000 towards contracting for implementation, which will be paid in the form of a short-term contract to one or more of the winners, at AirQo’s discretion.

How to enroll in your first Zindi competition

How to create a team on Zindi

How to update your profile on Zindi

How to use Colab on Zindi

How to mount a drive on Colab

This challenge is open to all.

Teams and collaboration

You may participate in competitions as an individual or in a team of up to four people. When creating a team, the team must have a total submission count less than or equal to the maximum allowable submissions as of the formation date. A team will be allowed the maximum number of submissions for the competition, minus the total number of submissions among team members at team formation. Prizes are transferred only to the individual players or to the team leader.

Multiple accounts per user are not permitted, and neither is collaboration or membership across multiple teams. Individuals and their submissions originating from multiple accounts will be immediately disqualified from the platform.

Code must not be shared privately outside of a team. Any code that is shared, must be made available to all competition participants through the platform. (i.e. on the discussion boards).

The Zindi data scientist who sets up a team is the default Team Leader but they can transfer leadership to another data scientist on the team. The Team Leader can invite other data scientists to their team. Invited data scientists can accept or reject invitations. Until a second data scientist accepts an invitation to join a team, the data scientist who initiated a team remains an individual on the leaderboard. No additional members may be added to teams within the final 5 days of the competition or last hour of a hackathon.

The team leader can initiate a merge with another team. Only the team leader of the second team can accept the invite. The default team leader is the leader from the team who initiated the invite. Teams can only merge if the total number of members is less than or equal to the maximum team size of the competition.

A team can be disbanded if it has not yet made a submission. Once a submission is made individual members cannot leave the team.

All members in the team receive points associated with their ranking in the competition and there is no split or division of the points between team members.

Datasets and packages

The solution must use publicly-available, open-source packages only.

You may use only the datasets provided for this competition. Automated machine learning tools such as automl are not permitted.

You may use pretrained models as long as they are openly available to everyone.

You are allowed to access, use and share competition data for any commercial,. non-commercial, research or education purposes, under a MIT license.

You must notify Zindi immediately upon learning of any unauthorised transmission of or unauthorised access to the competition data, and work with Zindi to rectify any unauthorised transmission or access.

Your solution must not infringe the rights of any third party and you must be legally entitled to assign ownership of all rights of copyright in and to the winning solution code to Zindi.

Submissions and winning

You may make a maximum of 10 submissions per day.

You may make a maximum of 300 submissions for this competition.

Before the end of the competition you need to choose 2 submissions to be judged on for the private leaderboard. If you do not make a selection your 2 best public leaderboard submissions will be used to score on the private leaderboard.

During the competition, your best public score will be displayed regardless of the submissions you have selected. When the competition closes your best private score out of the 2 selected submissions will be displayed.

Zindi maintains a public leaderboard and a private leaderboard for each competition. The Public Leaderboard includes approximately 25% of the test dataset. While the competition is open, the Public Leaderboard will rank the submitted solutions by the accuracy score they achieve. Upon close of the competition, the Private Leaderboard, which covers the other 75% of the test dataset, will be made public and will constitute the final ranking for the competition.

Note that to count, your submission must first pass processing. If your submission fails during the processing step, it will not be counted and not receive a score; nor will it count against your daily submission limit. If you encounter problems with your submission file, your best course of action is to ask for advice on the Competition’s discussion forum.

If you are in the top 10 at the time the leaderboard closes, we will email you to request your code. On receipt of email, you will have 48 hours to respond and submit your code following the Reproducibility of submitted code guidelines detailed below. Failure to respond will result in disqualification.

If your solution places 1st, 2nd, or 3rd on the final leaderboard, you will be required to submit your winning solution code to us for verification, and you thereby agree to assign all worldwide rights of copyright in and to such winning solution to Zindi.

If two solutions earn identical scores on the leaderboard, the tiebreaker will be the date and time in which the submission was made (the earlier solution will win).

The winners will be paid via bank transfer, PayPal if payment is less than or equivalent to $100, or other international money transfer platform. International transfer fees will be deducted from the total prize amount, unless the prize money is under $500, in which case the international transfer fees will be covered by Zindi. In all cases, the winners are responsible for any other fees applied by their own bank or other institution for receiving the prize money. All taxes imposed on prizes are the sole responsibility of the winners. The top winners or team leaders will be required to present Zindi with proof of identification, proof of residence and a letter from your bank confirming your banking details. Winners will be paid in USD or the currency of the competition. If your account cannot receive US Dollars or the currency of the competition then your bank will need to provide proof of this and Zindi will try to accommodate this.

Please note that due to the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict, we are not currently able to make prize payments to winners located in Russia. We apologise for any inconvenience that may cause, and will handle any issues that arise on a case-by-case basis.

Payment will be made after code review and sealing the leaderboard.

You acknowledge and agree that Zindi may, without any obligation to do so, remove or disqualify an individual, team, or account if Zindi believes that such individual, team, or account is in violation of these rules. Entry into this competition constitutes your acceptance of these official competition rules.

Zindi is committed to providing solutions of value to our clients and partners. To this end, we reserve the right to disqualify your submission on the grounds of usability or value. This includes but is not limited to the use of data leaks or any other practices that we deem to compromise the inherent value of your solution.

Zindi also reserves the right to disqualify you and/or your submissions from any competition if we believe that you violated the rules or violated the spirit of the competition or the platform in any other way. The disqualifications are irrespective of your position on the leaderboard and completely at the discretion of Zindi.

Please refer to the FAQs and Terms of Use for additional rules that may apply to this competition. We reserve the right to update these rules at any time.

Reproducibility of submitted code

• If your submitted code does not reproduce your score on the leaderboard, we reserve the right to adjust your rank to the score generated by the code you submitted.
• If your code does not run you will be dropped from the top 10. Please make sure your code runs before submitting your solution.
• Always set the seed. Rerunning your model should always place you at the same position on the leaderboard. When running your solution, if randomness shifts you down the leaderboard we reserve the right to adjust your rank to the closest score that your submission reproduces.
• Custom packages in your submission notebook will not be accepted.
• You may only use tools available to everyone i.e. no paid services or free trials that require a credit card.

Documentation

A README markdown file is required

It should cover:

• How to set up folders and where each file is saved
• Order in which to run code
• Explanations of features used
• Environment for the code to be run (conda environment.yml file or an environment.txt file)
• Hardware needed (e.g. Google Colab or the specifications of your local machine)
• Expected run time for each notebook. This will be useful to the review team for time and resource allocation.

Your code needs to run properly, code reviewers do not have time to debug code. If code does not run easily you will be bumped down the leaderboard.

Consequences of breaking any rules of the competition or submission guidelines:

• First offence: No prizes for 6 months and 2000 points will be removed from your profile (probation period). If you are caught cheating, all individuals involved in cheating will be disqualified from the challenge(s) you were caught in and you will be disqualified from winning any competitions for the next six months and 2000 points will be removed from your profile. If you have less than 2000 points to your profile your points will be set to 0.
• Second offence: Banned from the platform. If you are caught for a second time your Zindi account will be disabled and you will be disqualified from winning any competitions or Zindi points using any other account.
• Teams with individuals who are caught cheating will not be eligible to win prizes or points in the competition in which the cheating occurred, regardless of the individuals’ knowledge of or participation in the offence.
• Teams with individuals who have previously committed an offence will not be eligible for any prizes for any competitions during the 6-month probation period.

Monitoring of submissions

• We will review the top 10 solutions of every competition when the competition ends.
• We reserve the right to request code from any user at any time during a challenge. You will have 24 hours to submit your code following the rules for code review (see above). Zindi reserves the right not to explain our reasons for requesting code. If you do not submit your code within 24 hours you will be disqualified from winning any competitions or Zindi points for the next six months. If you fall under suspicion again and your code is requested and you fail to submit your code within 24 hours, your Zindi account will be disabled and you will be disqualified from winning any competitions or Zindi points with any other account.