Teams are invited to apply to the data application competition “NEDO Supply Chain Data Challenge” organized by the Government of Japan with the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO), an R&D funding organization under the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, the Government of Japan.
The competition winner will be awarded 10 million JPY or 82K USD. The application is open until 17 May 2022.
The purpose of this competition is to promote the utilization of Tellus, the satellite imagery data platform of Japan, and is to encourage and award proposals of novel ideas and prototyping the proposed systems in the field of supply chain management by utilizing satellite data, other geospatial information, statistics, etc. The main point of this project is to open the possibility of integrated use and business development on satellite image data.
The Call for Proposals comprises the following two tasks. Details could be found on the website.
1) The first is the “System Development” Section.
It calls for the development (prototyping for demonstration) of a decision support system that estimates and visualizes the impact on supply chains caused by logistics congestion (container logistics), especially at ports, and by disasters such as typhoons. The system is supposed to facilitate better-informed decision-making to mitigate the impact. This CFP is a large public call, with the first prize of 10 million JPY or 80K USD. Specifically, proposals will be judged on their uniqueness and the potential of prototype systems for future business development to address the following issues.
This category is further divided into two themes:
(1) Estimating impacts of logistics congestion, particularly at ports, and
(2) Estimating impacts of disasters, such as large-scale windstorms and floods.
2) The second category is a call for “Ideas.”
It seeks just unique ideas (without any prototyping) for solving supply chain management issues by satellites and other geospatial data. While this category is relatively easy to enter, the prize money is 1 million JPY or 8K USD. This could be a good opportunity for graduate students and researchers to develop ideas with their expertise.
Datasets necessary for prototyping are already accommodated in Tellus, the data platform. Teams do not need to purchase datasets for the competition while participators are welcome to add their own data, such as satellite images and survey data, to enrich and deepen the analysis.
We will provide teams not equiped with sufficient techinical knowledge with technical mentoring from our group of experts.
The judges include large corporations such as trading companies, banks, insurance companies, and venture investors. Teams can take advantage of this opportunity to demonstrate their achievements for future implementation or business development.