Resilience Academy is happy to announce that the Visualisation Challenge 2020 has officially been launched. In the Visualisation Challenge 2020, groups of University students compete to create a winning visualisation for geospatial data sets of given topics. A webinar was held on 10th of July where the challenge, as well as the topics of this year, were introduced. Over 50 students from four Tanzanian universities – SUA, SUZA, ARU, UDSM – attended to hear about the challenge. This year there are three different topics for students to choose from and create a visualisation for. The topics are given by real clients from Tanzanian Urban Resilience Program and the World Bank, which gives the students a valuable opportunity to connect with the urban resilience community. The topics of this year are:

1. Visualisation of urban tree distributions and its importance for urban forestry management. 
2. Visualizing drainage bottleneck locations.
3. Integration of different types of data to identify challenges through urban planning.

Currently, the students are gathering their groups and choosing the topic to work with, and formally applying to the Visualisation Challenge 2020. From the beginning of August, selected groups start working with the chosen topic with the help of their mentor from their University. The students will plan and create a data visualisation by using the skills they already have as well as exploring new tools and software. The skills may vary from technical skills to theoretical knowledge of urban resilience phenomena. The students are encouraged to be creative, professional, and to remember to enjoy the challenge. This is a great opportunity for them to learn, network and to understand their own valuable potential as young professionals.

The finale of the Visualisation Challenge 2020 is in October where the winners will be announced and awarded. That is when the next part of this blog post will be released. To stay tuned and to find more information, follow this blog, Resilience Academy social media channels or the Resilience Academy website: https://resilienceacademy.ac.tz/dataviz-announcement-2020/. 

The Resilience Academy team, partner University experts, Visualisation Challenge 2020 clients, and the mentors of the students are excited to follow the work of students and to see the final visualisation results. Nothing less than amazing, creative and inspirational visualisations are expected from the skilled youth! 

On behalf of the Resilience Academy team and Visualisation Challenge 2020 mentors,

Best wishes and good luck,

Venla Aaltonen