Congratulations to Ehsan Hamzei, Kamal Akbari and Kimia Amoozadeh from the University of Melbourne for winning the BioGeoRef2021 mini-hackathon!
The BioGeoRef2021 mini-hackathon was held on December 13th at the recent Spatial Data Science Symposium 2021. Participants were challenged to develop the most accurate method to georeference text locality strings that described the location at which biological specimens were collected, with a $250 prize for the winner. They were given the locality strings, and coordinates, as per the following examples:
| Locality | Lat | Long |
| Buller, Paparoa Mountains, north flank of Mt Euclid, c. 1-1.5km east of Morgan Tarn. | -41.9562 | 171.6032 |
| Auckland Island, lower slopes about Musgrave Inlet | -50.6469 | 166.1533 |
| Nelson, about l km SE of Lake Peel, in the track to Balloon Hut | -41.1316 | 172.6001 |
| Marlborough, hills about Queen Charlotte Sound | -41.3859 | 173.7136 |
| Lake Ellesmere Spit = Kaitorete Spit – About Midway along length. | -43.874 | 172.2679 |
The winning team tested four different rules-based methods, as shown on the following slide.
Well done and congratulations to Ehsan, Kimia and Kamal – a great effort!
Massey Geoinformatics Collaboratory 