INTEC will host the NASA Space Apps Challenge
Santo Domingo. Dominican Republic, through Instituto Tecnológico de Santo Domingo (INTEC), will be one of the 50 locations where the “NASA International Space Apps Challenge” will be held, a global 48 hours contest where applications and / or actions are captured on the internet, which can be potential tools for mass use, in spatial matters and social development issues.
During the 20 and 21 days next April, an intensive workshop will be developed to identify the Dominican team that will represent the country in the global contest.
The international event of 48 consecutive hours of programming aims to create programs in space matter using data collected by NASA and European space agencies in recent years, which are available to the public.
NASA invites programmers, artists, designers, communicators, thinkers and creators to integrate part of the teams. Professionals, students and the general public with knowledge of application development or graphic design can participate.
The event is officially held in the country since last year and has involved more than 30 Creole developers that add to the thousands distributed in 17 countries around the world, who stand out for diverse projects among themselves, many of them with applications with social orientation.
Dominican participation is important because it helps to make available to a large number of people data that to date there was no way to access. Likewise, the global government open data initiative is very supportive, which encourages governments to make public and accessible the data they handle.
The Pineapple Project, created by the group "Taínos" integrated by Elminson De Óleo, Camilo García and Armando Medina, two professionals and a software engineering student from INTEC, was the application that represented the country in the 2012 contest, which won the award for the most innovative projects, with international standards. The application makes use of data collected by NASA on the climate and the feasibility of the land from any place on earth so that, according to its location, farmers can obtain precise information about which fruits or vegetables will have better growing conditions in the place where they are located. In addition, the application allows obtaining other very important data on the planting and commercialization of the product. For example, it allows you to publish the price of the crop and compare it with the prices of the other farmers.
Background of the event
The international competition will take place simultaneously in 17 countries and from the International Station of NASA (in space), this event is part of the Open Government initiative plan promoted by President Obama.
Open Government is an initiative that seeks to create concrete commitments by governments to promote transparency, empower citizens, combat corruption and raise awareness of new technologies. It is expected that NASA's participation in the Open Government plan of the United States will promote innovation through International collaboration.
More details about the event are available at: www.spaceappschallenge.org/
For more detail about the type of applications that need to be developed:
www.spaceappschallenge.org/challenges/
Participants can register from the following links:
www.Spaceappschallenge.org/register/
http://spaceappschallenge.org/location/santo-domingo/
How was the event at 2012?