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The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and T-REX sponsored the NGA Geo-Hack for Humanity held at the T-REX center in downtown St. Louis September 8-10, 2023. The MU-IDSI and DSA Program sent a team to compete. The hackathon was focused on Food Security. Students were asked to analyze key indicators related to food availability in a region of the world. Analysis included a wide variety of approaches, including the prediction of food availability based on crop yields, soil moisture, regional impacts/conflicts, and human population. The student teams were asked to conduct their problem solving and data analysis based on a real-world prompt. The prompt was developed by NGA, T-REX, and other geospatial data science partners associated with the T-REX facility. The Mizzou TIG-REX Team focused on Nigeria and characterizing soil moisture and its relationship to agro-ecological regions, land cover, and other factors such as populated places, riparian areas, and developed roadways. The analysis covered a period of imagery from 2015-2022 that included normal years as well as drought years. The TIG-REX Team consisted of 7 members (1 PhD, 5 MS, and 1 Senior): Justin Krohn, Krutika Deshpande, Yves de Jesus, Newgin Sam, Helder Dinis, Ajay Karera, and Sam Spell. The Team represented the program well in both analytics and presentation and was awarded 2nd Place (Krutika is holding the award in the picture!) – a great result!
