From Fog Nets to Neural Nets

Model the water output from water-collecting fog nets in Southwest Morocco. Accurate predictions can improve collection efforts and enable greater access to fresh water throughout the year. #development

$15,000 in prizes
Completed may 2016
543 joined

The Tableau Foundation Challenge: From Fog Nets to Neural Nets

Fog nets in Morocco

Summary: Set fiber to the rain

Dar Si Hmad (DSH) manages a network of fog nets that collect and disseminate fresh water to landlocked communities in Southwest Morocco.

DSH has assembled years of data about weather patterns and water yield. They are in search of clever ways to predict how much water they can expect in the future and clear and insightful ways to visualize their collections system. See more information about each challenge below!

Prediction Challenge: From weather to water

For landlocked, indigenous Berber communities in Southwest Morocco, fresh water is usually scarce. Look to the sky, though, and you’ll find abundant fog draping the area 6 months/year. Fog collection is an ancient system to collect clean water in a non-invasive, ecologically friendly way in regions where fog abounds.

Dar Si Hmad (DSH) has built the world’s largest fog-collection and distribution system to serve these indigenous communities. Delivery of fogwater significantly reduces women’s laborious water-gathering chores, and helps foster stable communities, continuation of ancestral languages and ways of living in thriving local environments.

Your challenge is to develop a model that will predict the yield of DSH’s fog nets for every day during an evaluation period, using historical data about meteorological conditions and the fog net installations. Accurate predictions will enable DSH to operate more effectively and the communities it serves to be have greater access to fresh water throughout the year.

Competition End Date:

May 3, 2016, midnight UTC

Place Prize Amount
1st $5,000
2nd $2,000
3rd $500

Visualization Challenge: Community, education, impact

For the first time ever, DrivenData is running a concurrent visualization challenge. There are many ways in which effective visualizations enable Dar Si Hmad and its US counterpart, Tifawin Institute, to deliver on their mission. A winning visualization may reveal new insight to the team. It may help the organization communicate its impact to stakeholders. It may engage and educate the community on the fog harvesting project.

In order to capture these diverse goals, we're awarding two sets of prizes to two different sets of winners. The first set, the Expert Panel Award, will be selected by a judging committee of visualization experts and organization staff from Dar Si Hamad, Tifawin Institute, DrivenData and Tableau. The second set of prizes, the Community Voice Award, will be the result of sharing the visualizations with the community and discovering which are most impactful for the people on the ground.

To compete, submit links to visualizations using Tableau software. For more details, see the Visualization Challenge page.

Competition End Date: May 3, 2016, Midnight UTC

Expert Panel Award:
Place Prize Amount
1st $2,000
2nd $1,000
3rd $750
Community Voice Award:
Place Prize Amount
Prize 1 $2,000
Prize 2 $2,000
 

dar si hmad tableau
tifawin