Ocean of Data Challenge
Post-secondary students across Canada are invited to test their skills in the Ocean of Data Challenge, a free, virtual student innovation competition hosted by DeepSense, COVE, and ShiftKey Labs.
Participants tackle ocean-related challenges using real-world data, working at their own pace to create solutions ranging from infographics and visualizations to apps and machine learning models. Each edition introduces a new theme and guiding question, encouraging fresh perspectives and interdisciplinary collaboration across fields like computer science, engineering, marine biology, sustainability, business, and more.
The challenge offers cash prizes, skill-building opportunities, and a platform to explore solutions for real-world ocean issues.
This special edition of the Ocean of Data Challenge, featured SailGP. Participants addressed the ultimate question: How can the data generated by high-performance sailing help us better understand the sport, sharpen its competitive edge, and tell the story of wind-powered competition?
The video submissions of the winners are now available for public viewing.
This solution develops a physics-informed, geometry-based system for detecting and quantifying wind shadow (“dirty air”) interactions between F50 catamarans during fleet racing, using 1Hz onboard telemetry.
What Was Built: A three-condition shadow model grounded in aerodynamic geometry classifies a trailing boat as affected when its leading competitor shares a similar heading (within 20°), is positioned upwind within 30° of true wind direction, and is ahead along the shared direction of travel within a defined shadow radius. Dynamic dirty air pair detection runs across the full fleet, producing timestamped records of which boats were shadowing which and for how long. An interactive race viewer with side-by-side telemetry comparison and mark wind overlays enables visual validation of detected events.
How It’s Used: Tacticians and performance analysts can query shadow exposure by boat, pair, or race segment, identifying which competitors most frequently impose or suffer aerodynamic penalty and when those interactions cluster during a race.
Why It Matters: In fleet racing at 40+ knots, wind shadow is a primary tactical weapon. Quantifying it from telemetry transforms shadow positioning from intuition into measurable, replayable data, supporting both real-time tactical decisions and post-race debrief. Making the invisible visible is what separates marginal gains from decisive ones.
The team built a software application that helps both SailGP fans and teams better understand race performance.
What Was Built The app provides a top-down view of the race, making it easy to visualize boat positions, routes and key moments throughout the event. It uses an AI model to estimate each boat’s probability of winning at any point in the race, helping users understand how the race is unfolding in real time. The platform also breaks down the main factors affecting performance, such as boat speed, positioning, tactical decisions and wind conditions. It can identify which boats are being impacted by the disturbed airflow from other boats and estimate how much this is affecting their performance. The app also includes an AI chatbot that can answer questions about race events, predictions, performance trends and sailing concepts in simple language.
How It’s Used For teams and coaches, these insights can be used to analyze previous races, understand what went right or wrong and identify ways to improve. For fans, the platform makes race strategy and decision-making much easier to follow. This can help explain why a boat may be gaining or losing an advantage during the race.
Why It Matters By combining real-time win probability, performance breakdowns and an AI chatbot into a single platform, the app makes the complexity of SailGP racing accessible to everyone, turning data into decisions for teams and into stories for fans.
Jack Ibsen developed Combined Optimal Route, a fan-friendly route optimization visualization for the television audience.
What Was Built Every second of every boat is graphed into a network, storing each boat’s heading, coordinates, wind speed and wind direction. Every node is then connected together with a weight applied between them based on how favourable the conditions are to travel from point to point. Dijkstra’s algorithm is then run to find the shortest and least resistant path, which becomes the Combined Optimal Route.
How It’s Used Broadcasters and producers can overlay the Combined Optimal Route during live coverage, giving television audiences a clear visual reference for the most strategically efficient path through the race course at any given moment.
Why It Matters Race strategy has always been difficult to communicate to casual viewers. By translating complex routing decisions into a single, intuitive visual, the Combined Optimal Route bridges the gap between expert tactics and fan understanding, making SailGP more compelling and accessible on screen.
Post-secondary students across Canada, test your skills in the Ocean of Data Challenge! DeepSense, ShiftKey Labs, and COVE are excited to host the 12th Ocean of Data Challenge: AI in Action, featuring Ocean Networks Canada.
Post-secondary students across Canada, test your skills in the Ocean of Data Challenge! DeepSense, ShiftKey Labs, and COVE are excited to host the 11th Ocean of Data Challenge: Telling Ocean Stories, featuring Ocean Networks Canada.
Post-secondary students across Atlantic Canada, test your skills in the Ocean of Data Challenge! DeepSense, ShiftKey Labs, and COVE are thrilled to be hosting the 10th Ocean of Data Challenge: Coastal Clarity to explore how we can build coastal resilience.
Join the Ocean of Data Challenge by COVE, DeepSense, The PIER, and ShiftKey labs for some creative collaboration and idea generation! Watch the kick off of the Challenge now and learn more about the challenge with presentations from experts.
Join the Ocean of Data Challenge by COVE and DeepSense for some creative collaboration and idea generation! Watch the kick off of the Challenge now and learn more about the challenge with presentations from experts.
CIOOS, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Ocean Start Up Project, COVE, ShiftKey Labs and DeepSense are hosting the seventh Ocean of Data Challenge.
Go behind the scenes of past challenges with kickoff recordings featuring challenge details and expert presentations.
