AI and Analytics for Business

Updates

Innovating with Weather Data

Since AIAB’s June launch of the Earth Networks Data Portal, Penn students, ranging from undergraduates to PhDs, have been incorporating the newly available weather intelligence data into their research and design projects. Through PennApps, the world’s largest collegiate hackathon organized by students, AIAB’s Earth Networks portal was incorporated into the development of six new projects:

  • terra: Cellular data and WiFi-free, peer to peer sensor communication platform
  • Blink!: Easy, affordable, accurate communication for locked-in patients
  • traveler: Revolutionizing travel planning using virtual reality and predictive machine learning
  • FlyerFighter: Extraction tool to capture information about an event just by taking a picture of its flyer
  • Grep Jobs: A visualization tool to help you decide on your next step for your career
  • InternetVane: An IOT, indoor weather vane that physically visualizes the direction of the wind in the area

Nearly 2,000 students participated in the 12th annual hackathon at the Wells Fargo Center, developing innovative software and hardware, and a full recap of the event can be found here. Earth Networks awarded a prize to the creators of InternetVane for their use of the data API.

In addition to the PennApps projects, the AIAB-Earth Networks partnership has enabled multiple new lines of academic research, including using weather data to make counterfactual predictions about judicial decisions through machine learning. A customer analytics and weather data visualization hackathon for students is also forthcoming.

The entire Earth Networks data repository is available to students at every level and faculty from every school within the University of Pennsylvania, through an application process, which can be found here.