Nichols Martin
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA will jointly seek out input on how forecasts can reduce the adverse effects of geomagnetic storms faced by navigation systems.
The MagNet: Model the Geomagnetic Field challenge calls for new forecast models that would help the government predict magnetic field changes and produce more accurate magnetic navigation, crowdsourcing initiative partner HeroX said Tuesday.
NOAA needs models that would use real-time data streams to generate forecasts and exceed the performance of existing machine learning methods.
The sought models should also be able to perform under conditions with operational limits.
"Since geomagnetic storms increase the pointing error, the accuracy of the magnetic disturbance forecasting is critically important for our operational magnetic reference models," said Manoj Nair, a research scientist with the geomagnetism team working between the National Centers for Environmental Information and the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences.
An open-source license will be provided to all chosen models.
Aside from HeroX, nonprofit DrivenData will serve as the implementation partner of the agencies for the crowdsourcing effort.
