Challenges, Competitions, and Grants

On this page you will find any challenges, incentive or general competitions, hackathons, etc. or award nominations that relate to Earth observation.

Mostly the challenges will be Australian, however from time to time we will also post international challenges that may be of interest.

Our intention is to be as inclusive as possible and source any EO challenges, competitions, and award nominations as they are released, however we know that we may miss notices of these on occasion and would welcome any entries that you deem suitable. If you are aware of anything that should be posted here, please send an email to communications@eoa.org.au.

The $11M XPRIZE Wildfire is a 4-year competition to innovate firefighting technologies that will end destructive wildfires.

THE CHALLENGE

Globally, Extreme Wildfire Events (EWEs) are becoming more frequent. EWEs burn bigger, at a higher intensity, and can quickly sprawl out of control. While they represent only around 3% of all wildfires, EWEs account for 80% of total associated fire-damages and are increasingly contributing to global greenhouse gas emissions and worsening health impacts from pollutants.

These large and destructive wildfires wreak havoc on ecosystems worldwide, especially in the expanding Wildland-Urban Interface, where homes, businesses, and major infrastructure are most at risk, and where wildfire control and suppression activities are increasingly outperformed.

HOW TO WIN

In the Autonomous Wildfire Response track, teams have 10 minutes to autonomously detect and suppress a high-risk fire in a 1000 km2, environmentally challenging area, leaving any decoy fires untouched.

In the Space-Based Wildfire Detection & Intelligence track, teams will have one minute to accurately detect all fires across a landscape larger than entire states or countries, and 10 minutes to precisely characterize and report data with the least false positives to two ground stations.

The $1M Lockheed Martin Accurate Detection Intelligence Bonus Prize incentivizes innovations in accurate and precise detection of wildfires.

Learn more