Waterhackweek

Mission

Our mission is to create a forum for collective innovation in developing software to address geospatial science challenges. We will draw from eScience Institute working group methodologies to advance the following four goals:

Training and Education

We will share knowledge in modern software tools aimed at handling increasingly large and complex geospatial science datasets. Our approach will be to develop templates for best practices in solving common geospatial data science challenges, built off a set of sample datasets provided during the hackathon. We will learn from leading experts in various fields, and use this knowledge to develop educational content that can be shared across disciplines long after the event. Our training will focus on software tools, but we will also explore challenges in successfully navigating complexity in project management and design.

Networking and Community Building

We will connect students, faculty, software developers and others across industry, government and academic settings. The connections we make during the hackathon will be maintained through an online user community. We hope our activities can foster the growth of an interdisciplinary network for solving Earth science challenges.

Data Accessibility / Sustaining an Open Source Community

We recognize the challenge of many geospatial investigations in accessing increasingly large datasets, such as high resolution remote sensing imagery. We will explore various solutions, including the co-location of datasets with software tools using services provided by commercial cloud vendors.

Waterhackweek will include support for geospatial tools, technologies, resources and datasets. Support will range from description and advocacy up to and including expert tutorials (group or 1-on-1) with demonstrations. The intent is for Waterhackweek participants to discover and develop cursory understanding of new resources. Supposing you find something you’d like to explore further you should come away with an understanding of the adoption path.

Software Development

We will harness our collective talent assembled during the event to rapidly advance the development of software tools.