AI4EO Challenge with Φ-week Bootcamp

The Φ-week Bootcamp is hosted by the European Space Agency (ESA) in the framework of Φ-week. It consists of an intensive five-day design ‘sprint’ process to prototype a solution geared at solving a big industry ‘challenge’ using Earth observation data. 40 pre-selected participants from all around the world work in teams, contributing with ideas and skills to respond to a specific industry challenge. The solutions are tested with a set of users and then presented to a jury that selects the prototype with the best potential for commercialisation.

Using a workshop-style format, the event is designed to be hands-on and interactive, allowing participants to test the prototypes on real-life users before presenting them on the final day.

The sprint is a 5-day progress for answering critical business questions through design, prototyping, and testing of ideas with customers. It covers business strategy, innovation, behaviour science, design thinking and more – packed into a battle-tested process that any team can use.

In 2018 the winning team, AMIGROW, presented a concept aimed at integrating field information about crop health and management practices with satellite imagery to provide farmers with valuable insights on crop production management in order to maximise crop yield.

In 2019 the Φ-week Bootcamp challenge was set by the energy service producer and provider EDP, through its innovation arm, EDP Inovação (EDPI). The challenge concerned the prevention, detection and mitigation of the risks of wildfires relating to bushes and vegetation, around important energy infrastructures in Portugal. The first prize was won by the team PowerPatrol, which developed an end-to-end demonstrative platform which allows the user to visualise their entire asset network, specify an area of interest, and observe the predicted risk of vegetation-related wildfire and the recommended actions based on this risk. The team won a travel voucher to a space/startup event of their choice and a 3-month licence to Planet’s API to further develop their prototype.