A conversation with the First Place winners of the Data Labeling Contest – In September 2020, we announced the Data Labeling Contest winners. The contest was part of the Cloud Native Geospatial Outreach Day sponsored by Planet, Microsoft, Azavea, and Radiant Earth Foundation. Participants were invited to contribute to open-access training data catalogs by identifying cloudy pixels in Sentinel-2 scenes. Two hundred thirty-one labelers joined the contest, representing a wide range of educational backgrounds, institutions, and geographies. While several awards were given to the top 83 contributions in six categories, in this Q&A, we sat down with Solomon Kica from Uganda and Jhomira Vanessa Loja Zumaeta from Peru, who won the Top Labeler first prize awards. Both winners were selected for the top prize because their scores were incredibly close, a 3.6% difference, and both scores stood out from the rest of the participants.

A conversation about the nuances of applying machine learning algorithms to Earth observation for global development organizations.

It is our pleasure to Dr. Zhuangfang NaNa Yi, a machine learning engineer at Development Seed, supporting international development organizations like UNICEF, the World Bank, and USAID in making data-driven policy decisions. She has extensive experience in applying machine learning algorithms to geospatial and satellite data, from building applications that farmers can use to track crop types and changes to water bodies, mapping forest and measuring food security, and more.

In May, we announced the winners of the Radiant Earth Computer Vision for Crop Detection from Satellite Imagery data challenge, which took place in February and March 2020. A total of 440 data scientists signed up for the challenge, representing a wide range of educational backgrounds, institutions, and geographies. While five winners were selected, in this Q&A, we sat down with Karim Amer, the First Place Overall Winner of the Data challenge, and the First Place African Citizen winner, Femi Sotonwa. Our goal is to learn more about the people behind the top scores.

It is our pleasure to introduce Dr. Catherine Nakalembe, Assistant Research Professor at the University of Maryland. Dr. Nakalembe travels the world working with national ministries and regional agencies in East and Southern Africa to monitor agriculture with Earth observation (EO).

As Lead of the NASA Harvest Eastern Africa-Hub program and part of the NASA Harvest and SERVIR Global Applied Science Team, she conducts remote sensing training in the use of EO tools to assess and forecast crop conditions.

It is our pleasure to introduce to you Ms. Awa Thiam, Founder of Lifantou and 2018 Mandela Washington Fellow alumna. Lifantou is an innovative social enterprise connecting smallholder farmers with school canteens in Senegal using geospatial data and tools.

African social entrepreneurs are considered essential for social progress in Africa. Often combining innovative technological solutions to address local societal challenges, these social entrepreneurs are not only creating jobs. Perhaps more interesting, their businesses are transforming all facets of society …

It is our pleasure to introduce to you Ms. Beth Roberts, an Attorney and Land Tenure and Gender Specialist with Landesa’s Center for Women’s Land Rights. Equipped with a Juris Doctor (JD) and an LL.M in Sustainable International Development Law, Ms. Roberts works to strengthen gender-equal land rights globally.

Founded in 1967, Landesa is an established global land rights organization that provides assistance directly to governments worldwide to promote gender-equitable rights to land through policy and legal advocacy, reform, and implementation. Landesa also engages in ground-level research and project implementation, and works in collaboration with civil society, corporations, global institutions, and initiatives.

It is our pleasure to introduce to you Dr. Vanessa Lawrence CB, a senior strategic geospatial advisor to governments, inter-governmental organizations and the private sector. As the longest-serving Director-General and Chief Executive of Ordnance Survey — Great Britain’s national mapping agency since 1875 — as well as the first woman to hold that position since it was founded in 1791, Dr. Lawrence helped to transform the organization to be a leading provider of geospatial data, before stepping down in 2014, after 14 years at the helm.