NASA launches Cities Innovation Challenge with Thinkable

Thinkable is excited to partner with NASA to host a global challenge to find the best & brightest teams to help develop solutions to wicked problems facing cities as the world increasingly becomes urbanised.

When you think of NASA, we tend to think of space exploration & research into planets beyond earth. However NASA has long pioneered our understanding of our earth, from the oceans to land and everything in-between. My own climate research relied heavily on open data from NASA satellites launched in the 1990s to help monitor the oceans.

Beyond satellites, NASA has also developed climate & earth models to help the wider global research community understand our earth. One of those projects was to develop a free open-source 3D simulator of the earth, called ‘NASA World Wide Wind’. It was built for wider research & development use than the commercial ‘Google Earth’ project.

World Wind is a free, open source API for a virtual globe. World Wind allows researchers & developers to quickly and easily create interactive visualizations of 3D globe, map and geographical information. Organizations across the world use World Wind to monitor weather patterns, visualize cities and terrain, track the movement of planes, vehicles and ships, analyze geospatial data, and educate people about the Earth.

NASA Cities Innovation Challenge

NASA is challenging students, researchers & developers across the world to help build an open-source product that helps cities that leverages the World Wind virtual globe platform. Ideas could help manage a range of city challenges, from environmental, public safety, utilities, transport, energy and health. A general roadmap of themes from OpenCitySmart here will help guide what you would like to work on.

There are two different categories to enter & win. One is as a University Project (or High School), and the other is as a Professional Project. The top three teams in each of three tracks, University, High School and Professional, will receive the ‘NASA Crystal Bull’ award! And some cash for the top project on the University and Professional categories.

Teams from across the world are welcome to apply and share a new open-source project to help cities! You can learn more and share your project/prototype here: https://nasa-world-wind-europa-challenge.thinkable.org/

Ben McNeil

Founder & Chief Scientist, Thinkable.org