Alibaba Cloud and Uk Met Office to Co-Organise Tianchi Data Mining Contest
October 11 2017 - 10:00PM
Business Wire
Global competition for solutions to climate
challenges for future generations
Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing arm of Alibaba Group, today
announced at the Computing Conference in Hangzhou China that it
will organise a data mining contest with the Met Office, the United
Kingdom’s national meteorological service. Data experts from around
the world will be invited to use Tianchi, Alibaba Cloud’s global
big data crowd intelligence platform, to develop solutions relating
to a potential future world in which deliveries by unmanned
balloons must be optimised to navigate the variabilities of the UK
weather.
The contest will be set in 2050, in a world where the invention
of “anti-gravity engines” has led to the creation of unmanned
balloons as the preferred logistics solution. However, because of
the UK’s complex meteorological conditions, the balloons are
occasionally delayed, damaged or even destroyed by extreme weather
conditions causing disruption and loss. The contestants will be
challenged to create algorithms that can plan flight routes for
these balloons to navigate the endless variation and changeable
nature across the UK to optimise their delivery schedules and
costs. The team which comes up with the best solution will win
USD10,000 cloud credits and an internship opportunity at the Met
Office.
Contestants will utilise public meteorological data provided by
the Met Office in categories including rainfall and wind speed.
Changing temperatures, rainfall, wind speed in area grids of four
square kilometres and five-minute time intervals will be selected
to challenge the resilience of the balloons. This will be overlaid
with data for the balloons such as take-off and landing locations,
maximum fly time and speed, as well as a set of limiting factors
such as collision avoidance parameters. Participants will be able
to test their algorithms and modify their models accordingly.
“We are excited about hosting the competition with the Met
Office. We share a vision to develop solutions that can solve
real-life problems of global interest. This competition will
challenge the participants in a scenario with real-life factors to
test both their technological capability and creative thinking. We
look forward to receiving innovative solutions from data talent
around the world,” said Wanli Min, Chief Machine Intelligence
Scientist, Alibaba Cloud.
"Since our foundation in 1854, the Met Office has been striving
to continuously improve the accuracy and usefulness of weather
forecasting. We are excited that data from our forecasting systems
is part of this challenging competition. We hope all contestants
will enjoy the British weather as much as we do, even if it pushes
them to the limit," said Alberto Arribas, Head Informatics Lab, Met
Office.
There are more than 100,000 developers and 2,700 academic
institutes and businesses from 73 countries and regions in the
Tianchi community. Through hosting big data competitions, such as
this, Tianchi pools the wisdom of data experts from around the
world and leverages the expertise of the Alibaba Cloud data
scientists to develop professional solutions for various verticals
including smart manufacturing, aviation, transportation and
logistics. The Tianchi scientists’ creativity will help entities in
different sectors to address real-world challenges. An example of
this is the successful KDD Cup 2017 competition, deemed the “Data
Mining Olympics”, in which 3,582 teams participated to develop
solutions to predict the traffic flow of highway tollgates.
The contest will open for registration on 30 October. For more
information, please visit the Tianchi website from 30 October.
About Alibaba Cloud
Established in 2009, Alibaba Cloud (www.alibabacloud.com), the cloud computing arm of
Alibaba Group, is among the world’s top 3 IaaS providers according
to Gartner1, and the largest provider of public cloud services in
China, according to IDC. Alibaba Cloud provides a comprehensive
suite of cloud computing services to businesses worldwide,
including merchants doing business on Alibaba Group marketplaces,
start-ups, corporations and government organisations. Alibaba Cloud
is the official Cloud Services Partner of the International Olympic
Committee.
1 Source: Gartner, “Market Share: Public Cloud Services,
Worldwide, 2016”, 19 September 2017”
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Alibaba GroupSindy Shi, +86 150 2192
5635ruoyun.sry@alibaba-inc.comorYinan Qian, +86 186 0004
0770yinan.qyn@alibaba-inc.com
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