The "Eyes on the Ground'' project is a collaboration between ACRE Africa, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), and the Lacuna Fund, to create a large machine learning (ML) dataset that provides a close-up view of smallholder farmer's fields based upon previous work within the Picture Based Insurance framework.

In order to help farmers across Africa manage agricultural risk, ACRE Africa utilizes image data to settle insurance claims and carry out loss assessment. ACRE reviews smartphone pictures of insured crops sent in by farmers to verify whether a farmer’s crops werelooking at damaged,s and whether this damage was related to weather, pests and diseases, oras well as man-made factors such as fire, to evaluate an insurance claim and determine appropriate compensation.

Evaluating images for thousands of insured smallholder farmers to verify insurance claims is however time-consuming, and this often slows down claims settlement. ACRE Africa is therefore looking at artificial intelligence to automate claims settlement, building on the training data that ACRE Africa and IFPRI produced with support from the Lacuna Fund.

Since most claims are related to drought, this challenge will ask participants to predict drought damage from smartphone images of crops taken in the past. The Eyes-on-the-Ground project has already successfully trained models to predict drought damage in the first two seasons, but those models did not transfer well into the third season on which data are available.

We therefore invite you to improve on the existing solutions, and improve the accuracy at which your model predicts drought damage across multiple seasons. The extent of drought damage can take on values of zero (in case there is no drought damage, and no insurance payout should be made), or a positive value (in case there is drought damage, and an insurance payout proportional to the amount of damage should be made).

We thank CGIAR Research Initiative on Digital Innovation for technical and financial supports that made this challenge possible.

The error metric for this competition is the Root Mean Squared Error.

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

Your submission file should look like this:

ID                             extent

L1095F00009C01S00200Rp01978     56

L1095F00009C01S00200Rp09218     48

These models often need to be applied at scale, so large ensembles aren’t encouraged. To incentivise more lightweight solutions, we are adding an additional submission criteria: your submission should take a reasonable time(~9 hours) to train and run inference.

We should be able to re-create your submission on a single-GPU machine (eg Nvidia P100) with less than 8 hours training and one hour inference. Additionally, the winning solutions will be implemented on a 4-core Virtual Machine with up to 16GB of RAM.

1st place: $5 000 USD

2nd place: $3 000 USD

3rd place: $2 000 USD

The winning solutions will

1. Comply with competition rules including rules on submission and documentation.
2. Adhere to hardware restrictions as required for implementation.

Payment will only be made after code review and sealing the leaderboard. Once confirmed, winners will be required to confirm their availability and collaborate with the hosts to implement their solutions.

There are 10 000 Zindi points available. You can read more about Zindi points here.

Competition starts on 21 July 2023.

Competition closes on 03 November 2023.

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

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

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

About the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

IFPRI provides research-based policy solutions to sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition in developing countries. Established in 1975, IFPRI currently has more than 500 employees working in over 70 countries, and works with a wide range of partners. It is a research center of CGIAR, the world’s largest agricultural innovation network. IFPRI’s vision is a world free of hunger and malnutrition. Its mission is to provide research-based policy solutions that sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition.

About Agriculture and Climate Risk Enterprise (ACRE Africa)

ACRE Africa is a risk management solutions designer linking stakeholders to localized solutions such as insurance and climate change adaptation strategies to reduce agricultural and climate risks. At ACRE, we are determined to champion a paradigm shift towards equity, fairness and innovation to help unlock the full potential of agriculture by eliminating the stress and potential damage of climate variables for farmers in developing countries. Presently we work in Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Zambia and projects in Uganda, Ghana, Malawi, Senegal, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia and Somali

About CGIAR Research Initiative on Digital Innovation

CGIAR Research Initiative on Digital Innovation is a three-year program launched in 2022. The Initiative aims to contribute to the acceleration of sustainable and inclusive agrifood systems transformation by generating research-based evidence and innovative digital solutions. Its three priority research areas include improving access to digital innovation, the quality of information delivered, and the capacity of end users to make use of it. The Initiative brings together agri-food systems scientists and digital technology practitioners to research and implement innovative digital solutions across food, land, and water systems in the Global South.

About CGIAR Research Initiative on Diversification in East and Southern Africa

Launched as a crucial response to the challenges posed by climate change, the CGIAR Research Initiative on Diversification in East and Southern Africa is a transformative program, strategically designed to foster climate-resilient agriculture and sustainable livelihoods across 12 countries in East and Southern Africa. Its primary aim is to assist millions of smallholder farmers in intensifying and diversifying their maize-based farming practices, thereby mitigating risks and enhancing productivity through adaptation.

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.

The data used in this competition is the sole property of Zindi and the competition host. You may not transmit, duplicate, publish, redistribute or otherwise provide or make available any competition data to any party not participating in the Competition (this includes uploading the data to any public site such as Kaggle or GitHub). You may upload, store and work with the data on any cloud platform such as Google Colab, AWS or similar, as long as 1) the data remains private and 2) doing so does not contravene Zindi’s rules of use.

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 30% 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 80% 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.

To be eligible for cash prizes, 1st, 2nd, or 3rd on the final leaderboard will release their top solutions under an open source license for ongoing use and learning.

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, 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 3 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.