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Past Sentinel Hub Custom Script Contests

Remote sensing is making its way into more and more applications and fields. Tools like the Sentinel Hub EO Browser with its custom scripting allow all people to browse, analyse and visualise satellite data in almost real-time.

Together with our partners, the Euro Data Cube (EDC), the Copernicus EU Earth Observation programme and the European Space Agency we are looking for new and innovative ideas and scripts. Therefore, we have organised a series of the Sentinel Hub Custom Script Contests starting with the first one in Spring 2019 and following with the second one in Winter 2019/2020. In April and May we organised a special edition of the Contest - the Covid-19 Custom Script Contest. Its aim was to help the world facing huge challenges getting back to ‘normal’ after the coronavirus Covid-19 pandemic. The success of the series motivated us to continue with the third edition of the Contest in Summer 2020.

To learn more about the latest Sentinel Hub Custom Script Contest – Urban Growth in Africa – with a focus to observe change detection and growth of urban area, see the official Contest page and the results below.

Results of Previous Contests

Results of the First Custom Script Contest

All the scripts that were submitted to the Contest in Spring 2019 were classified in one of the categories below and added to the GitHub (see results below for direct links). The winners of the contest were announced during the Living Planet Symposium in Milan on May 15th 2019 and informed by e-mail the day after.

The authors of the best scripts won attractive prizes, and the author of the overall best script got an invitation to visit the European Space Research Institute (ESRIN), home of ESA’s center for Earth Observation, to discuss his script with experts in the relevant fields.

The winning scripts were highlighted in Why join the next Sentinel Hub Custom Script Contest blog post and in two guest blog posts, Mapping deforestation with Sentinel Hub by Nicolas Karasiak, and Sentinel Hub supporting IBISA in the Crop Micro-Insurance Field by Jean-Baptiste Pleynet.

Best Overall Script

  1. Detecting deep moist convection with Sentinel-2 - Stavros Dafis, Greece

Detecting deep moist convection with Sentinel-2 script
The Deep Moist Convection script - the best overall script in the first Contest - applied to the Sentinel-2 image over the North Greece on April 14th 2019. View it in EO Browser.

Agriculture and Forestry

  1. Anomaly Detection - Jean-Baptiste Pleynet, Luxemburg
  2. Forest cut temporal detection - Nicolas Karasiak, France
  3. Pseudo Forest Canopy Density (pseudo-FCD) - Antonio Carlón Paredes, Spain

Marine Environment

  1. White-water detection - Mohor Gartner, Slovenia
  2. Ocean plastic detector prototype - Bence Mélykúti, DPhil (Oxf), Germany

Snow and Glaciers

  1. Monthly snow report - Nicolas Karasiak, France
  2. Snow Cover Change Detection - Karl Chastko, Canada

Disaster Management and Prevention

  1. Detecting deep moist convection with Sentinel-2 - Stavros Dafis, Greece
  2. Seldom and regular water surface detection - Mohor Gartner, Slovenia
  3. Fire boundary script - Adzanil Rachmadhi Putra, Fatwa Ramdani, Indonesia

Air Quality and Urban Planning

  1. Green City - Carlos Bentes, Estonia
  2. City Highlights - Thales Sehn Körting, Brazil
  3. Sentinel-1 Urban Areas - Monja Šebela, Slovenia

Other Scripts

  1. Land surface temperature (LST) mapping - Mohor Gartner, Slovenia
  2. Monthly composite - Nicolas Karasiak, France
  3. Barren Soil Script - Monja Šebela, Slovenia

Best SAR Script

  1. Seldom and regular water surface detection - Mohor Gartner, Slovenia
  2. Sentinel-1 Urban Areas - Monja Šebela, Slovenia
  3. Forest Hurricane - Kamil Onoszko, Poland

Forest Hurricane script
The Forest Hurricane script - Visualization before and after the Hurricane in Chojnice, Poland in August 2017.

Results of the Second Custom Script Contest

The second Contest started on 15 October 2019 and ended on 31 January 2020. All entries were judged by a jury of experts on functionality and usefulness, as well as possible commercial potential.

The winning scripts were highlighted in Step into the Beautiful World of Custom Scripts blog post.

The Winning Scripts

  1. Ulyssys Water Quality Viewer by András Zlinszky, Hungary
  2. SAR-Ice: a Sea Ice RGB composite by Martin Raspaud, Sweden and Mikhail Itkin, Norway
  3. Satellite Derived Bathymetry Mapping (SDBM) by Mohor Gartner, Slovenia

UWQV script - Tsimlyansk Reservoir
Tsimlyansk Reservoir, Russia. The Ulyssys Water Quality Viewer applied to the Sentinel-2 image, acquired on September 5th, 2019. The script is dynamically visualizing the chlorophyll and sediment conditions of water bodies on both Sentinel-2 and Sentinel-3 images See it in EO Browser.

All received scripts are available on our Github repository:

  1. Tonemapped natural color script by Gregory Ivanov, Russia
  2. Aquatic plants and algae custom script detector (APA-script) by Anna Péliová, Carla Garcia-Lozano and Josep Sitjar, Spain
  3. Water In Wetlands Index (WIW) - Sentinel-2 Version by WILLM Loïc, LEFEBVRE GaÎtan, DAVRANCHE AurÈlie, CAMPAGNA Julie, REDMOND Lauren, MERLE ClÈment, GUELMAMI Anis and POULIN Brigitte, France
  4. Water In Wetlands Index - Landsat 8 Version by WILLM Loïc, LEFEBVRE GaÎtan, DAVRANCHE AurÈlie, CAMPAGNA Julie, REDMOND Lauren, MERLE ClÈment, GUELMAMI Anis and POULIN Brigitte, France
  5. Se2WaQ by Nuno Sidónio Andrade Pereira, Portugal
  6. Soil Moisture Estimation script by Narayana Rao Bhogapurapu, India
  7. Land use visualization for Sentinel 2 using Linear Discriminant Analysis by Marta Elvira, Roberto Calvo and Javier Becerra, Spain
  8. OLCI Natural Colours with Sigmoid by Jérôme LOUIS, France
  9. TOA Ratio B09-B8A ColorMap Blue-Red & Natural Colours by Jérôme LOUIS, France
  10. Selective Enhancement based on Indices by Sérgio Augusto Jardim Volkmer, Brazil
  11. Water Bodies’ Mapping - WBM by Mohor Gartner, Slovenia
  12. Tracking Radar Vegetation Index (agriculture development) change by Valters Zeizis, Latvia
  13. Flood Mapping With Sentinel-1 by Maryam Salehi, Iran
  14. Index visualization by Martin Javorka, Slovakia
  15. Homage to Mondrian by Matevž Pintar, Slovenia
  16. NDVI on L2A Vegetation and natural Colours by Jérôme LOUIS, France
  17. Radar Vegetation Index for Sentinel-1 (RVI4S1) SAR data by Dipankar Mandal, India
  18. Radar vegetation index code for dual polarimetric - RVI script by Subhadip Dey, India
  19. SAR for deforestation detection by Antonio Carlón Paredes, Spain
  20. Agricultural Crop Monitoring from Space by Maryam Salehi, Iran

Results of the COVID-19 Custom Script Contest

European Space Agency (ESA), in coordination with the European Commission, has launched a special edition of the Custom Script Contest, focused on the support of space assets during the COVID-19 crisis, managed by Euro Data Cube group. Following a similar format, but further to looking for new algorithms, we were in the quest for ideas on how satellite data could help monitor and mitigate the situation after the coronavirus Covid-19 pandemic. During the Contest (from 6th of April to 31st of May 2020) we have received many interesting ideas and proposals from remote sensing experts, machine learning scientists and the interested public.

The Best Overall Idea

Monthly Winning Ideas - April 2020

Monthly Winning Ideas - May 2020

Weekly Winning Ideas

The best ideas were presented to the European Commission in the context of the dossier ESA is preparing on space as a support to Covid-19 situation in the EU. Read more about the winning scripts of RACE Upscaling Competition in one of our blog posts.

Results of the Third Custom Script Contest

The third Contest started on 4 August 2020 and ended on 30 November 2020. All entries were judged by a jury of experts on functionality and usefulness, as well as possible commercial potential.

The winning scripts were highlighted on our Sentinel Hub Blog.

The Winning Scripts

  1. Reactiv Script by Thomas di Martino, Elise Colin-Koeniguer, Regis Guinvarc’h, and Laetitia Thirion-Lefevre, France - See a blog post for more about the winning script.
  2. PUCK - Perceptually-Uniform Color Map Kit by Keenan Ganz, USA - See a blog post!
  3. Landslide detection for rapid Mapping Using Sentinel 2 by Alexander Ariza and Norma Davila, Germany - See a blog post for more details.

Reactiv script
Shanghai Wetland visualised with REACTIV script from 2018–01–01 to 2020–09–11.

The best eo-learn-based script:

The early bird submission prize went to Thomas di Martino, Elise Colin-Koeniguer, Regis Guinvarc’h, and Laetitia Thirion-Lefevre for their Reactiv Script.

The received scripts are available on our Github repository:

  1. Landsat 8 Clouds Segmentation Script by Ingrid Grenet and Houssem Farhat, France
  2. Oil Slicks and Red Tide Monitoring by TIZNEGAR Startup Co, Iran
  3. Mix Leaf Area Index (MixLAI) by Hamid Rahimi, Iran
  4. DeepGNDVI Script by Roshni Biswas and Anurag Saha Roy, USA
  5. Vegetation and Land Monitoring with Cloud Mask by TIZNEGAR Startup Co, Iran
  6. DeepBAIS2 by Roshni Biswas and Anurag Saha Roy, USA
  7. Active Fire Detection S2 by TIZNEGAR Startup Co, Iran
  8. High Accuracy Active Fire Point Detection by TIZNEGAR Startup Co, Iran
  9. Detection of Evapotranspiration Levels Composite by Ramon Suarez, Venezuela

Results of the Fourth Custom Script Contest - Urban Growth in Africa

This special edition of the Sentinel Hub Custom Script Contest started on 3 May 2021 and ended on 5 September 2021. The objective of this activity was to demonstrate the power of a deep multi-temporal and multi-resolution data cube combined from Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2 and Landsat. The area of interest we were looking at was Africa. To make it even more interesting, we have selected Dakar, Senegal, and loaded it with even more data - Airbus Pleiades and SPOT, Maxar WorldView/GeoEye provided by European Space imaging, and Planet PlanetScope. Participants explored the depth and detail of so much commercial data and dense time series over a long period available for one location.

The winning entries were highlighted on our Sentinel Hub Blog.

Best Custom Script

The award for the best custom script went to the Regione del Veneto team:
Niccolò Tolio, Andrea Semenzato, Umberto Trivelloni, Silvano De Zorzi, Daniele Piccolo, Mirko Frigerio, Alessandro La Rocca.

Their winning Data-fusion Sand-oriented Land Cover Classification script is available on our Custom Script Repository.

Data-fusion Sand-oriented Land Cover Classification
Saloum Delta, south of Dakar. Comprised mostly of swamps, wetlands and small islands, this natural environment is widely covered by sand surfaces (especially in the northern sector), which are thoroughly detected by the script.

Best Written Story

The best written story award went to RC from Line of Actual Control for the The Big Oil Spill(s) story. The author used SAR imagery to assess environmental damage in Nigeria. Read the whole story!

The Winning Pin Stories

The award for the best pin story went to:

  • Karl Chastko for Solid Waste and Rapid Urban Development in Dakar pin story

In addition to the prize for the best pin story, we decided to award two additional prizes for the second and third best pin stories. The additional prizes therefore went to:

  • Pawan Muddu for Mbouda - Emerging Pride of Urban Africa pin story
  • RC from Line of Actual Control for Oil and Water - Melut’s Environmental Catastrophe pin story

Solid Waste and Rapid Urban Development in Dakar pin story
Solid Waste and Rapid Urban Development in Dakar pin story by Karl Chastko. This pin story depicts urban growth from the perspective of waste production. As the population of a city grows so does the amount of waste it produces. This pin map shows the rapid expansion of the Mbeubeuss solid waste facility between 2012 and 2020 in Dakar, Senegal.

Results of the Fifth Custom Script Contest - Climate Change

This special edition of the Sentinel Hub Custom Script Contest was organized in partnership with the World Meteorological Organization. The contest started on 15th March 2022 and ended at midnight on 11th September 2022. The objective of this activity was to demonstrate the power of EO data in helping detect the effects of climate change. The winning entries will be highlighted on our Sentinel Hub Blog.

Best Custom Scripts

First place: Detection of Lake Extent Changes by Jan Landwehrs
See the script on our Custom Script Repository.

Second place: Normalized Difference Yellowness Index (NDYI), visualisation of blooming in an Amazonian tree species and canola crops by Mario Alberto Guzmán Soza
See the script on our Custom Script Repository and learn more about it in a dedicated blog post.

Detection of Lake Extent Changes script
Detection of Lake Extent Changes script - Landsat images of Lake Poyang on 1988-08-13 (left, Landsat 4-5-TM Level-2 True Color Image) and on 2022-08-19 (middle, Landsat 8-9 Level-2 True Color Image). The rightmost panel shows changes in the water body extent between both scenes detected by the presented script.

Best Written Stories

First place: When it comes to wildfires in Siberia - every degree matters by Artyom Tadzhibaev
Read the original story here.

Second place: Nature’s Wrath - 2022 Silchar Floods Assam by Pawan Muddu
Take a look behind the scenes of this written story here and read the original story here.

WMO Internship Award

Our contest partner, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), is offering an internship to a participant of their choice. The internship offered will last six months and will take place in Geneva at WMO headquarters. A selected candidate will be contacted by the WMO directly and will have the opportunity to learn more about WMO activities, in particular the WMO Space Programme.