Spotlight on Code for Earth’s Joint Challenges – European Environment Agency and Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon

As you might know – or not, if you're here for the first time – this year's edition of Code for Earth has many pre-defined challenges— 19, to be exact. In this article, we have decided to put the spotlight on our Joint Challenges. If you're wondering what they are, you're not alone: the Joint Challenges are unique challenges developed in partnership with academic and research institutions, as well as with a European Agency— namely, the European Environment Agency. These challenges are not just a call to action for thinkers and doers; they are a showcase to the power of collaboration, and today we're going to explore the joint challenges with the European Environment Agency and with Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon.

First things first: what is Code for Earth?

Code for Earth is an ECMWF innovation action that stands for innovation, collaboration and Open Source development. It bridges the gap between creative minds and real-world challenges. Since 2018, each summer, selected developer teams or individuals work together with experienced mentors from ECMWF and partner organisations on innovative projects, related to a broad scope of activities such as data science, weather, atmosphere, climate or other earth sciences, visualisation and more.

If you want to participate but don't know where to start to write a good proposal, we highly suggest you read our first article— it's Pandora’s box of good tips and recommendations.

How the Chaos Communication Congress 2023 led to an unexpected challenge opportunity with Helmholtz Zentrum Hereon

Now this joint challenge with Helmholtz Zentrum Hereon has a great background story on networking: the first discussions on a potential joint challenge with our Helmholtz Zentrum Hereon colleagues dates back to only a few months ago, when the paths of Hereon and the Code for Earth team crossed in Hamburg. Martin Otto Paul Ramacher and Johannes Bieser presented at the #37c3, the Chaos Communication Congress, on numerical air quality systems.  Conversations were straight forward, and the interest to jointly develop a challenge for Code for Earth 2024 was kind of a no-brainer. Together with Martin, Johannes and our ECMWF colleague Miha Razinger, we developed Challenge #34, part of the 3rd Stream: Software Development for Earth Science Applications.

Challenge #34: Regional to Urban Air Quality Mapper

The goal here is to develop an application capable of improving (downscaling) the quality of regional-scale pollutant concentrations at ground level to urban-scale concentrations for various urban areas in Europe. The minimum outcome would be a downscaling application for the Copernicus ECMWF European Air Quality Reanalysis based for example on land use regression in combination with ground-based measurements for urban areas in Europe.

Skills required:

• Python or any other programming language suitable for spatial data processing (interpolation, projection, re/gridding, …)

• Experience with any land use regression or other downscaling methods is an advantage but not necessary

• Plotting/Visualization of maps and statistical indicators (optional)

• Experience in developing GUI or API applications

Code for Earth’s Collaborative Challenges with the European Environment Agency

This year, Code for Earth takes a big step by partnering with the European Environment Agency (EEA), to introduce two challenges aimed at addressing a number of environmental issues. The EEA is an European Agency tasked with providing sound, independent information on the environment. It basically serves as a major information source for those involved in developing, adopting, implementing and evaluating environmental policy, and of course, also for the general public.

Adding to the already existing work between EEA and ECMWF, Code for Earth offers two joint challenges in collaboration with the European Environment Agency— to which you can submit a proposal until 9 April 2024.

The two challenges are both part of the Code for Earth Stream 1: Data Visualisation and Visual Narratives for Earth Sciences Application. Sounds like a mouthful, but it's a cool one. But now, let's see these challenges a bit more in detail.

P.S. You can find all of this year's challenges on our Github page.

Challenge #13: Communication of key trends and messages associated with climate change impacts at the national - regional scale supporting the European Climate Data Explorer

The goal of the challenge is to provide users of the European Climate Data Explorer application with information related to key trends and messages associated with the impacts of climate change at the national – regional scale. The challenge is to ensure that this info is presented in an appealing, useful, and interactive way within the developed applications. This challenge would provide users with a quick, yet robust assessment of the expected changes as indicated by the ECDE applications. The ideal solution will provide an assessment of these changes, but also provide some supporting narrative.

There's obviously a set of skills required for you to participate in it, let's round them up together:

• Knowledge of handling geospatial data and time series

• Processing and visualization of climate data - C3S used #netcdf files, so experience in handling and interpretation of this data is required

• Experience with Javascript and React which are both required for the development of the applications in the new applications framework

• UX and communication of climate information

• Machine learning could be a viable technology to implement this challenge

Now, if you're not sure about what you've just read and need some clarification, you can always head over to the Challenge's page on Github and learn more, or shoot your questions to the mentors Christiana Photiadou, Samuel Almond, Edward Comyn-Platt, and Chiara Cagnazzo: they're there to help solve all your doubts!

Challenge #15: Calendar of heatwaves: user interface allowing planning based on heat projections

Can you imagine to schedule a calendar of heatwave days and tropical nights? This challenge aims to create a user interface that would allow the non-technical users (e.g., someone working in the health sector, in education, a policy maker, a politician, a member of the general public), for a location of choice, to learn about the number of heatwave days/tropical nights expected in a given time period in a calendar year, currently and for different future time horizons under different climate change scenarios.

Cool, right?

Let's go over a few of the skills required to participate in this challenge:

• Knowledge of handling geospatial data and time series

• Processing and visualization of scientific data - C3S used #netcdf files, so experience handling this data is required

• Experience with Javascript and React which are both required for the development of the applications in the new applications framework

Check out the challenge's description on Github to learn more! Get in touch with the mentors, if you have specific questions: Aleksandra Kazmierczak, Eline Vanuytrecht, Julie Letertre, Samuel Almond, and Edward Comyn-Platt.

We have now reached the end for this article. If you'd like to learn more on the joint challenges for this edition of Code for Earth, don't miss out on our next article, focusing on the joint challenges with CESOC / Uni Bonn and with the University of Reading. Keep coding, and see you soon!