Intro

So, after a lot of talk with @WildlifeGISgirl, @UUDreams, @Brian_Bancroft & the plethora of super geoninja on the #GISTribe forum (is it a forum, a meet, a symposium or even a tweeting?)…..I think I have the happenings of an outline for a challenge but feel free to comment and advise on how this can be made better. Here is my brain dump on how I think this could work;

The rules of running the challenge:

1. The challenge is monthly

2. The challenge is hosted by someone different

3. The challenge must be able to be done cross platform so that anyone (and I include my 7yr old daughter in this) can do it

4. The subject matter should be something that betters or helps the community (GIS or humanity)

5. All data/resources should be open source and in the public domain for ease of use (and legal!)

Does this sound fair? I am guessing that if we stick to these basic rules that we can add/remove more later if the game expands…One thing that I, personally, am keen on is introducing people to new data and new ways of working with it…so introducing people to the great open data from across the globe to solve interesting problems.

So here it is:

I was originally going to do a challenge based on cumulative impacts of offshore infrastructure and shipping within the United States and how it would affect other countries, though I thought that it would be a little mean for a first challenge. Luckily or rather I SHOULD say unfortunately, something else has dominated the news, Ebola….so this will be the challenge for this month.

The Brief:

Ebola is currently the word on everyones lips, in September, the World Health Organisation released information that the first human to human transmission of the disease had occured outside of Africa (Article here).

Objective: Using the resources provided, create a map which can be used to inform the public of the Ebola situation



The product can be of your choosing, you could provide a historic map of Ebola cases, you could provide a map of the increase in cases, you could even create a timeline map or a 3D flythrough of Africa with people waving and saying hello (as long as it relates to Ebola)….or, of course, you could produce something of your own which would help disseminate information about Ebola (using geo as a base)

End Date

All entries should be submitted on the #GISTribe site (or for PDF & other formats to dragons8mycat@live.co.uk) by SUNDAY 9th NOVEMBER 2014.

This will give the judges time to review all entries prior to the result on #GISTribe the following Wednesday during the weekly hangout/meet/tweeting etc,,,

Data Sources:

Of course, to do this challenge you will require the necessary Ebola data, this can be found below;

Historical Ebola information: Data Here

Situation Reports on Ebola: Data Here

Here are the world administritive boundaries and other useful vectors for this via Natural Earth: Data Here

Anything Else?

Hopefully, that should be straight forward and easy to understand some simple rules can be found here, but if you have any input or questions, please feel free to contact me on Twitter: @Dragons8mycat

Nick D