Meet the winners of UmojaHack #3: Hotspots Challenge
Each year, thousands of fires blaze across the African continent. Some are natural occurrences, part of a ‘fire cycle’ that can actually benefit some dryland ecosystems. Many are started intentionally, used to clear land or to prepare fields for planting. And some are wildfires, which can rage over large areas and cause huge amounts of damage. Whatever the cause, fires pour vast amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, along with smoke that degrades air quality for those living downwind.
Figuring out the dynamics that influence where and when these fires will occur can help us to better understand their effects. And predicting how these dynamics will play out in the future, under different climatic conditions, could prove extremely useful. For this challenge, the goal is to do exactly that. We’ve aggregated data on burned areas across the whole of the DRC for each month since 1 April 2000. You’ll be given the burn area data up to the end of 2013, along with some additional information (such as rainfall, temperature, population density etc) that extends into the test period. The challenge is to build a model capable of predicting the burned area in different locations over the 2014 to 2016 test period based on only this information.
Thank you to Microsoft and African Bank for sponsoring UmojaHack.
You may use only the datasets provided for this competition. Your solution must use machine learning.
If your solution places 1st, 2nd, or 3rd in the final ranking, you will be required to submit your winning solution code to us for verification and you thereby agree to share all worldwide rights of copyright in and to such winning solution to Zindi.
If your solution places 1st, 2nd, or 3rd in the final ranking on the private leaderboard, you will be required to submit your winning solution code to us for verification.
You will have until 18:29 GMT on 21 March 2020 to submit your code for review. Submit your code to zindi@zindi.africa with subject line “Challenge name position # - team name or username and university.” Regardless of any public announcement of winners, Zindi reserves the right to disqualify any user, team, or university on or even after 21 March 2020 if the code does not reproduce the winning submission.
Individual competitors are able to form teams on this competition. You must accept the rules associated with teaming up.
Multiple accounts per user are not allowed. Collaboration across individuals not in the same team is not allowed. And collaboration across different teams that is not allowed.
Code must not be shared privately. Any code that is shared, must be made available to all competition participants through the platform.
The solution must use publicly-available, open-source packages only.
Maximum 200 solutions submitted per day. Your highest-scoring solution will be the one by which you are judged.
Note that there are Public and Private Leaderboards. The Public Leaderboard excludes approximately 50% 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 100% of the test dataset, will be made public and will constitute the final ranking for the competition.
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.
If two solutions earn identical scores on the leaderboard, the tie breaker will be the date and time in which the submission was made (the earlier solution will win).
Refer to the FAQs and Terms of Use for additional rules that may apply to this competition.
You acknowledge and agree that Zindi may, without any obligation to do so, remove or disqualify an individual, team, account, or university if Zindi believes that such individual, team, account, or university is in violation of these Rules.
Teams may win in one challenge category, and are encouraged to enter only one
We reserve the right to modify these rules at any time as necessary.
The error metric for this competition is the Root Mean Squared Error.
You need to predict the proportion of the burned area per area square, with values of 0 to 1.
The IDs take the form of [area ID]_yyyy-mm-dd. There are 3821 area squares each with a unique ID ranging from 0 to 3820.
ID burn_area 0_2014-01-01 0.5624 1_2014-01-01 0.7654 2_2014-01-01 0.1134 3_2014-01-01 0.9751
In order to win, you must:
1st prize: $400 USD shared between members of the winning team plus LinkedIn Learning access and Microsoft certification vouchers (can be used for the AZ-900: Microsoft Azure Fundamentals or Azure Data Scientist Associate Certificate) for all team members. Plus $2,500 USD awarded to your university.
2nd prize: LinkedIn Learning access and Microsoft certification vouchers(can be used for the AZ-900: Microsoft Azure Fundamentals or Azure Data Scientist Associate Certificate) for all team members
3rd prize: LinkedIn Learning access and Microsoft certification vouchers (can be used for the AZ-900: Microsoft Azure Fundamentals or Azure Data Scientist Associate Certificate) for all team members
All winners’ names and photos will appear on Zindi social media accounts.
08:00 – 08:30 GMT Welcome and orientation (live video conference across all university locations using Zoom and YouTube)
08:30 – 09:00 GMT Technical orientation to the platform and the challenges (live video conference across all university locations using Zoom and YouTube)
09:00 GMT Competition opens (note that users can sign up for a competition and join teams before the time)
12:00 - 13:00 GMT: Spot prizes and meet SAEON and Xente
09:00 – 16:29 GMT Students form teams and work on the challenge, questions and issues during this time can be addressed by local Zindi reps or via WhatsApp group
16:29 GMT Submissions close
16:45 – 17:15 GMT Announcement of international winners and prizes (video conference across all university locations via Zoom and YouTube)
17:15 - 17:30 GMT Announcement of local winners and prizes
Welcome to all the students from:
Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University
Adama Science & Technology University
African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS-Senegal)
African Leadership University
Ashesi University
Bayero University Kano
Benson Idahosa University
Bindura University of Zimbabwe
Blossom Academy
Cairo University
Carnegie Mellon University Africa (CMU-Africa)
Central University
Chinhoyi University of Technology
Dakar Institute of Technology
Daystar University
Dedan Kimathi University of Technology
Durban University of Technology
University of Sousse (ENISo)
Enugu State University of Science and Technology
ESI - Ecole Supérieure d'Informatique Alger
Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta
Federal University of Petroleum Resources, Effurun
Federal University of Technology Akure, FUTA
Federal University of Technology Minna
Federal University of Technology, Owerri
Federal University Oye Ekiti
Ghana Technology University College
Higher School Of Communication of Tunis (SUPCOM)
Information and Communications University
IT Business School
Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology
KCA University
Kenyatta University
Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology
Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology
Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH)
Ladoke Akintola University of Technology Ogbomoso
Lagos State University
Maasai Mara University
Makerere University
Meru University of Science and Technology
Michael Okpara University of Agriculture
Moringa School
MultimediaUniversity of Kenya
National Advanced School of Engineering (NASE)
National Engineering School of Tunis (ENIT)
National School of Electronics and Telecommunications of Sfax
National University of Science and Technology
Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology (NM-AIST)
Nnamdi Azikiwe University
Obafemi Awolowo University Ile-ife
Olabisi Onabanjo University
Stellenbosch University
The Technical University of Kenya (TU-K)
The University Of Dodoma
Tshwane University of Technology
Uganda Technology and Management University
United States International University-Africa
University for Development Studies
University of Benin
University of Cape Coast
University of Cape Town
University of Dar es Salaam
University of Energy and Natural Resources
University of Ghana
University of Ibadan
University of Ilorin
University of Lagos
University of Limpopo
University of Malawi The Polytechnic
University of Sol Plaatje
University of Uyo
Vaal University of Technology