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The Met Office hosted the lead European event for the NASA International Space Apps Challenge over the weekend, sending forth two winning mobile applications for global judging.
"It’s been great to be here collaborating with the Met Office and all of the supporting organisations," said NASA Open Government programme manager Nick Skytland, hailing the Met Office as representing the "future of using Open Data and Open Source to drive initiative across government."
Two apps were sent through to the global finals, Growers Nation and We Love Data. Growers Nation is an app to "determine what produce will grow given local soil characteristics and weather conditions". The judges said the app stood out because of its "humanitarian potential for third world countries."
Another team, We Love Data, developed a device which would "warn hay fever and asthma sufferers when the next days pollen count was expected to be high." The judges said that the app inspired because of its "potential to make data accessible and useful to millions of allergy sufferers."
"We are thrilled to have been able to judge the Space Apps challenge at the Met Office. The challenge has really highlighted how much can be achieved in such a short space of time, especially with the use of crowdsourcing and open source data which proved vital to all of the teams involved," said judge and Mubaloo marketing chief Sarah Weller.
