NGA awards fifteen challenge winners for discovering, analyzing disparate data

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency awarded fifteen challenge.gov participants with $10K at the conclusion of the first phase of the Disparate Data Challenge, and all cash winners and one non-cash awardee were invited to the second phase.

NGA launched the disparate data challenge using www.challenge.gov, seeking intuitive and innovative capabilities to discover, retrieve and analyze data in wildly disparate formats, schemas, interfaces, and locations. Phase 1 of the challenge asked participants to implement functioning capabilities that could demonstrate access and retrieval to analyze representative datasets.

“This challenge is part of a greater strategy to engage with innovators and problem solvers we haven’t typically worked with,” said Col Mark DiPaolo, mainstreaming innovation branch chief. “With technology evolving so fast, the challenge allows us to post the problem and let all actors in the market provide functioning innovations.”

Of the 32 teams that responded to the challenge, including small businesses, universities and private citizens, 25 entities who had not previously worked with the agency presented working capabilities.

The submissions included capabilities for data discovery of disparate data. Some capabilities delivered strong user experience and visualization, while others presented innovative ways to rapidly condition, index, retrieve and manipulate disparate data sets.

The 15 cash awardees and one non-cash winner include:

1.    CyberGIS
2.    SitScape
3.    Blue Zoo
4.    Voyager
5.    App Symphony
6.    Meta DDC
7.    Paxata
8.    MediaFlux
9.    MARI
10.    RAMADDA
11.    Enigma
12.    Diffeo
13.    GeoFairy
14.    Envitia
15.    Sourcerer
16.    Pyxis  (non-cash winner)

In addition to a cash prize, each winner received an invitation to a follow on Demo-thon in the D.C. area scheduled for Oct. 20-21. During the next stage of the challenge, participants will have an opportunity to demonstrate their solutions and earn an additional monetary reward. The first place winner will receive $25,000, second place $15,000 and third place $10,000.

Source: NGA