On June 6th, 2015 Big Data Utah and the Boulder/Denver Big Data Users Group (BDBDUG) kicked off the Global Data Competition, an inaugural event focused on climate change and split into 22 regions around the world.

The competition has two phases, each with a scoring system that allows solutions to be compared within the region it is submitted. Competitors can compete on an individual, group (2-10 people), or organization (10+) level.

Phase 1, centered on Learning Image Classification, is now underway. Participants are tasked with taking a set of 4,766 images of Mars and predicting whether or not a volcano is depicted in each image. All the data and tips necessary to get started can be found at http://www.global-data-competition.com/code-and-submissions/.

Beginning in late August, Phase 2 will include sessions, videos and tutorials on getting started with data science, reviewing exploratory data analysis techniques, data visualization and web scraping. The competition during this phase will tie the training into acquiring data from a variety of sources, including NASA’s newly released 11 Terabytes of data.

Visit www.global-data-competition.com for more information including registration, code and data.