Terms & Conditions

Version: 27.07.2022

Table of Contents

  1. Background information
  2. Definition
  3. Eligibility
  4. Right to participation and obligations
  5. Access and use of the Platform
  6. Liability
  7. Disclaimer
  8. Confidentiality
  9. Intellectual Property Rights
  10. Selection of the winning teams & Prize distribution
  11. Personal data
  12. Disqualification
  13. Cancellation
  14. Governing law
  15. Miscellaneous

Background information

1.1 The competition has been developed as a joint project with EUMETSAT, ECMWF, Mercator Ocean International and the EEA. Through this competition, they aim to build a community-driven resource of notebooks on the Copernicus WEkEO online platform that will empower others to start their own journeys with Earth observation data. To that end, it has decided to organise a Copernicus Jupyter Notebook Competition (hereinafter referred to as “Competition”).

1.2 SpaceTec Partners SRL (hereinafter referred to as “the Organiser”) has been awarded the contract for the organisation of Competition contract with EUMETSAT.

Definition

2.1 “Force Majeure” means an event which is, unforeseeable, unavoidable and external at the time of Contract signature, occurs beyond the control of the affected Party and renders the performance of the Contract impossible for the affected Party, including but not limited to: Acts of God, Governmental Administrative Acts or omissions, consequences of natural disasters, epidemics, war hostilities, terrorist attacks.

2.2 “Intellectual Property Rights” means all Registered Intellectual Property Rights, and all unregistered intellectual property rights granted by law without the need for registration with an authority or office including all rights in information, data, blueprints, plans, diagrams, models, formulae and specifications together with all copyright, unregistered trademarks, design rights, database rights, topography rights, know-how and trade secrets or equivalent rights or rights of action anywhere in the world.

2.3 “Applicant” means a legal or natural person that is eligible to participate in the Competition in accordance with Article 3. Each participating Applicant can participate as an individual or be part of a team (the “Applicant Team” or “Applicant Teams”). Each Applicant can only be part of one Applicant Team. Each Applicant Team is represented by a leader (the “Team Leader”, or “Team Leaders”). For the instances where individuals participate they become the “Team Leader”. The Team Leader is the formal and sole contact point with the Organiser concerning the Competition, Submissions and any prize, benefit or recognition that may result from the Competition Submission. Any planned or unplanned changes to the team composition of a Applicant Team are to be announced to the Organiser by the Team Leader without undue delay. Changes to the team composition of an Applicant Team can allow for merged teams, split teams or additional teams, as communicated to the Organiser by the original Team Leader and after the Organiser approval. Additional or split teams appoint new Team Leaders.

2.4 “Jury” means a natural or legal person who supports the Organiser and EUMETSAT to select a winner Applicant following the selection procedures detailed in the “Rules of Participation”.

2.5 “Partners” means the economic operators who are partnering with EUMETSAT on the implementation of the WEkEO DIAS, being (i) ECMWF, (ii) Mercator Ocean International, and (iii) European Environment Agency.

2.6 “Third-parties” means a natural or legal person other than EUMETSAT, the Organiser, a jury member and/or an Applicant.

2.7 “Platform” means the platform developed to host the competitions and available here.

Eligibility

3.1 The Competition is open to both individuals and teams from enterprises, scientific and research institutions, universities, or individuals of legal adult age from anywhere in the world. Applicants must be at least 18 years old, or must have reached the age of legal majority in the jurisdiction where they reside, whichever is older. 

3.2 The following people may participate but are not eligible to win any prize: (a) individuals who are, or at any point since April 25, 2022, have been employed by (i) the Organiser, (ii) EUMETSAT, (iii) the WEkEO DIAS partners; or any of its direct or indirect affiliates or subsidiaries; (b) immediate family (spouse, parents, siblings, and children) and household members of any those employees or former employees.

Right to participation and obligations

4.1 All eligible applicants have the right to participate in the Competition on a free-of-charge basis. Applicants who wish to participate in the Competition must register via the platform link. By participating in the Competition and clicking on the “Participate now” button, Applicants explicitly adhere to these Terms and Conditions. All costs incurred in participating in the Competition shall be borne by the Applicants.

4.2 Applicants certify that they have sufficient ownership of the relevant Intellectual Property Rights and the information provided during the Competition, and that they have the right to register and represent the legal entity under which they apply (when applicable) in the Competition. Applicants declare that they do not submit any material that is copyrighted or protected by trade secret (1) including any information that infringes any third-party proprietary, intellectual property (unless covered by the license), industrial property, personal rights or other rights, including without limitation, copyright, trademark, patent, trade secret or confidentiality obligations; (2) otherwise violates applicable law; or (3) is subject to any actual or threatened litigation or claim. Applicants are responsible for (i) any violations resulting in the unauthorised use of a third party’s intellectual property and (ii) compliance with applicable laws. Specifically, Applicants also declare that all codes, information and materials submitted by them during the Competition are not in breach of any applicable law, licence, regulations or third-party rights.

4.3 When participating in the Competition, Applicants shall not be considered as “consumers” as defined by the Consumer Rights Directive (Directive 2011/83/EU).

Access and use of the Platform

5.1 When creating accounts on the Platform, Applicants must provide the Organiser information that is accurate, complete and current at all times. Failure to do so constitutes a breach of the Terms, which may result in immediate termination of the Applicant’s account on our Platform and their participation in the Competition.

5.2 Applicants are responsible for safeguarding the password that they use to access the Platform and for any activities or actions under a password, whether a password is with our Platform or a third-party service. Applicants agree not to disclose a password to any third party. Applicants agree to be fully responsible for activities that relate to their account or their password. Applicants must notify the Organiser immediately upon becoming aware of any breach of security or unauthorised use of an account.

5.3 Applicants may not use as a username the name of another person or entity that is not lawfully available for use, a name or trademark that is subject to any rights of another person or entity other than the Applicant without appropriate authorisation, or a name that is otherwise offensive, vulgar or obscene.

Liability

6.1 Except for gross negligence, the Organiser, nor a member of the Jury or EUMETSAT having contributed to the Competition shall be liable for any claim, damage or loss incurred by the Applicant, including without limitation indirect, compensatory, consequential, incidental, special, incorporeal or exemplary damages arising out of the use of or inability to use the Platform, and shall not be subject to legal action in this respect.

Disclaimer

7.1 Participation to the Competition or use of the Platform is at the sole risk of the Applicant. The Competition and its Platform are provided without warranties of any kind, whether express or implied, including, but not limited to, implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non- infringement or course of performance.

7.2 The Organiser makes no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, about the completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability or availability with respect to the content contained on the Platform for any purpose. Any reliance they place on such information is therefore strictly at the own risk of the Applicant.

Confidentiality

8.1 Each Jury Member, the Organiser and the subcontractors are bound by a non-disclosure and confidentiality agreement before reviewing the Competition Applications, confirming that they will not share any of the information contained in the applications with anyone other than the other Jury Members, the Organiser or EUMETSAT.

8.2 Article 8.1 does not apply to information that was in the public domain at the time (1) it was disclosed or is subsequently made available to the general public without restriction by the Applicant; (2) or was disclosed with the prior written approval of the Applicant; (3) or became known without similar restrictions as to its use or disclosure from a source other than the Applicant; (4) or was used or disclosed after a period of three years from the date of disclosure; or (5) was required to be disclosed by a court of law.

Intellectual Property Rights

9.1 All proprietary rights shall be and remain with the Applicants respectively, however the final submission needs to be open source i.e. shareable under an MIT licence. The final submissions will be made available on the on Copernicus WEkEO online platform. The Organiser, EUMETSAT and the Members of the Jury shall not have any right, license, title or interest in or to any confidential information, except the limited right to review, assess and help develop such Confidential Information in connection with the Competition.

9.2 Applicants hereby understand and acknowledge that the Organiser shall not assume any liability for any damages resulting from their ideas or information becoming public under an MIT licence. Please note that after the Competition, Applicants and/or Entries may be publicised in promotional material related to the Competition. This promotional material may be distributed online and posted on the Organiser site, EUMETSAT’s website or third-party websites.

Selection of the winning teams & Prize distribution

10.1 The selection process of the winners of the Competition is executed exclusively in English via the Competition Platform. The application to be submitted for the Competition consists of two parts: 

  • Each Team Leader is required to submit a single completed submission on the Competition Platform containing the following: 
    • A short summary of the project; 
    • All team members with brief biographies and their roles in the team; 
    • Track and Thematic of the submission; 
    • A link to the Jupyter notebook with the open source code;
    • A PDF (printout) of the Jupyter notebook with the open source code. 

Only upon completion of all required fields your application is considered complete. The submission deadline is 4 September 2022 at 16:59 CEST. You are encouraged to submit your application before the deadline in case IT issues arise. Competition Submissions that have not been submitted, or Competition Submissions submitted past the abovementioned deadline, are not eligible for evaluation and will under no circumstances be reviewed by the Jury. 

  • Following the application deadline, eligible submissions will be reviewed by the Jury.  The final decision on the selection is made by EUMETSAT and shall not be subject to dispute in a court of law. These decisions shall be final and binding for all Participants and Teams. Participants shall have no right to justification for the decisions made by  EUMETSAT or the Jury Members of any selection procedure. 

10.2 In order to be eligible for the prizes, the following criteria need to be fulfilled:

  • Notebooks should use the recommended template available on the WEkEO Github, and provide descriptive elements in markdown as well as code (see existing examples on the WEkEO JupyterLab).
  • Notebooks should work on the WEkEO JupyterLab platform (within current resource specifications and using existing or additional compatible libraries described in an environment file). Additional libraries used should be compatible with an MIT licence (e.g. BSD, Apache 2, L-GPL).
  • The notebook needs to make use of Copernicus data and information but is not limited to them.
  • Notebooks should use the WEkEO HDA API (ideally via the client provided – https://github.com/wekeo/hda, which is pre-installed in the WEkEO JupyterLab).
  • External datasets may be used, but need to be open source and accessible via an API (this access should be demonstrated in the notebook).
  • The final submission also needs to be open source i.e. shareable under an MIT licence.

10.3 All submissions will be evaluated and scored by the Jury on five common criteria:

  • Documentation and style of the code (20% weighting in scoring);
  • Contribution to Open Science (20% weighting in scoring);
    • Applicability to a wider community
    • Addressing barriers to access and use
  • Level of creativity and originality (20% weighting in scoring).
  • Feasibility and veracity of the solution (20% weighting in scoring);
    • Assess whether the developed solution is feasible/technically/scientifically correct.

In addition, for each track, specific criteria will be used to evaluate the notebook (20% weighting in scoring).

  • Track A: Utilise the broad range of Copernicus data
    • Use of a combination of Copernicus datasets
    • Added-value of data fusion over single data use
    • Appropriate pre-processing
  • Track B: Visualise changes to our environment
    • Correctness of scientific presentation of information
    • Understandability for non-experts
    • The best visual technique for the type of data represented
  • Track C: Innovate with Artificial Intelligence
    • Added value of ML/AI
    • Use of models developed and trained during the competition
    • Scalability of the solution
  • Track D: Bring awareness to challenges on planet Earth
    • Understandability for non-experts
    • The potential impact of the story
    • Compelling visualisation of the data

10.4 The Jury Members are carefully selected to represent a qualified group of judges with relevant and varying expertise. Each Jury Member is bound by a non-disclosure and confidentiality clause before reviewing the Competition Submissions, confirming that they will not share any of the information contained in your Competition Submission that is not publicly available on the Competition Platform with anyone other than the other Jury Members or the Organisers.

10.5 The prizes can only be claimed by the Team Leader of each Team. The Team Leader is the formal and sole contact point with the Organisers concerning the Competition Submissions and any prize, benefit or recognition that may result from the Competition Submission. The Organiser will set up contracts on the basis of a proposal provided by a team lead, with an explicit written authorisation from the EUMETSAT.

Personal data

11.1 The personal data and/or company information that Applicants share during user registration and applications will not be shared with any parties other than the Organiser, the Jury Members, EUMETSAT, solely for the purposes of executing the competition.

11.2 However, Applicants agree to the use of their personal data for the following purposes: (A) Outreach and ecosystem building: the Competition organisation is funded by EUMETSAT. In its objectives to create a WEkEO Jupyter Notebook library, the Organiser and EUMETSAT and its Partners may use a team’s name and a description of its solution for public promotion and communication purposes. For use of Applicants’ personal data in this context, the Organiser will seek their prior and explicit consent; (B) Essential notifications: to administer Applicant’s participation in the Competition, the Organisers send notifications to the e-mail addresses of the Applicants in this Competition.

11.3 The Organiser shall ensure the confidentiality of the Personal Data processed by protecting them against unauthorised or unlawful access, acquisition, use and disclosure, in particular by: (1) limiting access to the Personal Data of the other Party only to their Personnel, that: are required or authorised to access such Personal Data; have committed themselves to confidentiality or are under a statutory obligation of confidentiality; have received the appropriate Personal Data protection training; (b) taking into consideration, in terms of IT tools, product, applications, the principles of personal data protection by design and by default.

11.4 Any request in relation to personal data must be sent to notebook@wekeo.eu [Data Controller].

11.5 Information submitted by Applicants to the Organiser when they participate in the Competition will be treated in accordance with our Privacy Policy, which can be found on the Platform. In addition, when Applicants submit information on a website run by a third party in connection with this competition, their information may be used by that third party in accordance with its privacy policy.

11.6 Applicants may be filmed or photographed while they are participating in the Competition. Except where prohibited, by participating in the competition, Applicants provide their explicit consent that the Organisers and/or EUMETSAT and its Partners may use free-of-charge their name, likeness, photographs, audio-visual footage, comments, and any other record of their participation in the competition for promotional purposes at any time and in any media.

Disqualification

12.1 The Organiser reserves the right to disqualify any Applicants who (i) cheats or otherwise alters the proper development of the Competition, (ii) engages in improper practices to increase chances of winning, (iii) breaches any applicable law or (iv) does not comply with these Terms and Conditions. 

Cancellation

13.1. The Organiser reserves the right to cancel the award of the prize, without the Applicants being entitled to claim any compensation, in particular if the number of competing teams or the quality of the submissions are too low. This decision must be substantiated, and the Applicants must be notified.

Governing law

14.1Any dispute, controversy or claim arising under, out of or relating to this Competition, which cannot be solved amicably, shall be submitted before French speaking section of the Tribunal of First Instance of Brussels.

14.2 The applicable law in the event of dispute in relation to the Copernicus Jupyter Notebook Competition is the law of the Kingdom of Belgium.

Miscellaneous

15.1 The Organiser may modify any provision of this agreement, at any time, by posting the updated agreement on the Competition website (https://www.notebook.wekeo.eu). Applicants are responsible for checking this site regularly.

15.2 The Competition and Platform may contain links to third-party websites or services that are not owned or controlled by the Organiser. Applicants further acknowledge and agree that the Organiser shall not be responsible or liable, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any such content, goods or services available on or through any such websites or services.