Funding Opportunity / 

Landsense Innovation Challenge

Empowering communities to monitor & report on their environment


About LandSense

LandSense is building an innovative citizen observatory to uncover the collective potential of citizen-powered science and satellite imagery to improve the way we see, map and understand the world.

The LandSense Citizen Observatory, funded by the Horizon 2020 program, will offer modern community-based environmental monitoring tools and information systems to help transform decision making. Through Earth Observation (EO)-driven mobile applications, LandSense promotes citizens to not only play a key role in environmental monitoring, but also to be directly involved in the co-creation of such applications. Currently within the EU’s EO monitoring framework, especially in the domain of Land Use Land Cover (LULC) dynamics, there is a need for low-cost methods for acquiring high quality in-situ data to create timely, accurate and well-validated environmental monitoring products. LandSense aims to disrupt the EO data economy by creating marketable solutions that can provide a step-change in LULC monitoring activities both within and beyond Europe.

About the LandSense Innovation Challenge 

The LandSense Challenge targets individuals, web-entrepreneurs, start-ups and SMEs coming from all participating Horizon 2020 countries, to present innovative IT solutions addressing one of the three LandSense domains:

  1. Urban Landscape Dynamics
  2. Agricultural Land Use
  3. Forest & Habitat Monitoring

The challenge focuses on using data streams coming from the LandSense Citizen Observatory, the Sentinel Hub Service or other relevant EO data sources to design novel Land Use/Land Cover solutions for a range of applications within the selected domains.

Four LandSense Challenge finalists will have the opportunity to pitch their ideas at the Second International ECSA Conference 2018 on 3 June 2018 in Geneva, Switzerland.

 

Each of the finalists will receive:

  • A travel voucher in the amount of 250 EUR per team for attending the event in Geneva
  • One ticket per team at a discounted rate to attend the Second International ECSA Conference 2018 (Cost: 50 EUR)
  • Business coaching and mentorship services at the challenge
  • Matchmaking and networking opportunities with leading experts in EO and citizen science
  • Promotional services by LandSense
  • Presentation about the LandSense Engagement Platform at the Conference in Geneva

The team with the best pitch in Geneva will receive:

  • A grand prize of 1,500 EUR (in the form of a check presented at the event)
  • A 1 year subscription to Sentinel Hub Enterprise, worth 5,000 EUR, provided by SINERGISE
  • Online business coaching and mentorship services provided by the LandSense team

The first stage calls for ideas and invites participants to submit proposals for IT-based LULC solutions within one of three LandSense domains.

Proposals (up to 2 pages long) should be submitted to the LandSense team by Friday 30 March 2018 (5pm CET), using the following email address: [email protected]. 

Please see the LandSense Challenge Application Form for further details.

In the second stage, the LandSense expert jury will select 4 proposals and announce the finalists on Friday 27 April 2018 (5pm CET). The finalists will be invited to the event in Geneva.

Deadline for Submission of Proposals: Friday 30 March 2018, 17:00 CET

Invitation of selected finalists until: Friday 27 April 2018, 17:00 CET

Challenge date in Geneva: Sunday 3 June 2018