Defence Online

Dstl competition receives over 5,000 entries

Homeland March 16, 2017

Dstl’s Kaggle competition has been a huge success, receiving over 5,000 entries, equivalent to over £2.5M in research.

The data science competition was run via Kaggle, the world’s largest data science competition community. This is the first time UK Government has worked with an online community in this way.

The purpose of the competition was to develop software that would help evaluate large data sets.

Dstl challenged users to develop an algorithm or software that will automatically detect and identify objects in satellite images, thus help intelligence analysts evaluate information more quickly, accurately and effectively.

The challenge was to correctly identify and categorise up to ten features and objects, such as cars, trees and buildings in a variety of environments. The project has the potential to identify solutions that will greatly improve the UK’s satellite intelligence gathering and analysis capability.

Commenting on the competition Dstl’s Phil Gibson said: “The competition has been very well received by the Kaggle community. It just goes to show that the ‘Kagglers’ deserve their reputation for coming-up with exciting, innovative and thought provoking solutions. The fantastic response shows that crowdsourcing solutions can be an invaluable tool in tackling complex challenges – helping us secure the nation’s defence, security and prosperity.”

Dstl are now analysing the data. The algorithms and software will be used in a number of projects where the ability to rapidly and accurately analyse data sets is important.

Details of the winning entries can be found on Kaggle’s website.

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Post written by: Vicky Maggiani

Vicky has worked in media for over 20 years and has a wealth of experience in editing and creating copy for a variety of sectors.