# CoRE stack innovation challenge on geospatial programming **URL:** \ **Category:** Season of Commits\ **Created:** [20 December 2025 15:49 UTC](https://forum.fossunited.org/t/core-stack-innovation-challenge-on-geospatial-programming/6920 "2025-12-20T15:49:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![aaditeshwar\_seth](https://forum.fossunited.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/ea666f/32.png) [@aaditeshwar\_seth](https://forum.fossunited.org/u/aaditeshwar_seth)\ **Post date:** [20 December 2025 15:49 UTC](https://forum.fossunited.org/t/core-stack-innovation-challenge-on-geospatial-programming/6920/1 "2025-12-20T15:49:09Z")
Inviting geospatial programmers, ecologists, water-security researchers, and community practitioners to build open-source solutions, analyses, and tools using the [CoRE Stack](https://core-stack.org/) datasets and APIs to improve socio-ecological resilience and support community-led landscape action. * * * [**Read more**](https://core-stack.org/core-stack-innovation-challenge-1st-edition/) about the challenge, join in weekly community calls, and view recordings and blogs of interesting use-cases from earlier calls. The **CoRE Stack (Commoning for Resilience and Equality)** is a community-based digital public infrastructure of pre-computed [geospatial datasets](https://core-stack.org/tools-2/), analytic pipelines, and [user-facing tools](https://explorer.core-stack.org/) that help [rural communities](https://core-stack.org/facilitate-stewardship/), researchers, and practitioners understand and act on socio-ecological challenges. The data spans novel geospatial layers on changes over the years in cropping intensity, water-table levels, health of waterbodies, forests and plantations, and welfare fund allocation, among others, sourced from multiple contributors or built using open ML models operating on satellite data. Rich analytics are computed on this data to build diverse social-ecological indicators through scientifically validated monitoring and modelling methodologies and algorithms. What the CoRE stack simplifies for researchers and developers is its novel approach to geospatial programming where it provides **ready-to-use pre-computed data of various landscape entities** - [micro-watersheds](https://core-stack.org/a-micro-watershed-registry-for-india/), waterbodies, forests, agroforestry plantations - organized in [**nested and connected spatial units**](https://core-stack.org/the-core-stack-data-structure/), and populated with tons of datapoints about these entities to build a **comprehensive place-based social-ecological understanding**. This [challenge](https://core-stack.org/core-stack-innovation-challenge-1st-edition/) asks teams to use the CoRE Stack APIs and datasets to: 1) answer scientific or operational questions about landscapes; 2) build meaningful additions or integrations for the stack; and 3) deliver open-source code, reproducible notebooks, and demonstrations that can be adopted by practitioners or integrated into the CoRE stack. Participants are encouraged to form **interdisciplinary teams** that combine domain expertise (ecology, hydrology, social science) with geospatial programming and UX/dev skills. **Timeline & milestones** - Launch: Nov 22, 2025 - Weekly developer community calls / mentorship: Fridays, 3-4pm - Submission deadline: Jan 15, 2026 - Shortlist & demos: Jan 31, 2026 - Winners announced & prize distribution: Feb 15, 2026 **Prizes** - Cash prizes of Rs 10,000 for exciting solutions and merch from FOSS United for all participants. - Mentorship sessions with domain experts in the CoRE stack network for top finalists. - Opportunities to integrate winning work into the CoRE Stack ecosystem and technical support for adoption. Join the CoRE stack developer community [Googlegroup](https://groups.google.com/u/2/g/core-stack-dev) and [Discord channel](https://discord.gg/FpMArraM2X) to contribute and to get clarifications, and participate in weekly community calls on Fridays 3-4pm IST. ---
**Author:** ![ansh](https://forum.fossunited.org/user_avatar/forum.fossunited.org/ansh/32/1423_2.png) [@ansh](https://forum.fossunited.org/u/ansh)\ **Post date:** [13 March 2026 09:26 UTC](https://forum.fossunited.org/t/core-stack-innovation-challenge-on-geospatial-programming/6920/2 "2026-03-13T09:26:32Z")
FOSS United Foundation has joined the [CoRE Stack Innovation Challenge](https://core-stack.org/core-stack-innovation-challenge-1st-edition/). We are very excited to announce that three PoC contributions are being provided follow-on support from as part of the [Season of Commits](https://forum.fossunited.org/t/season-of-commits-2026/7501) program to enhance and build them out into full-fledged products. A set of mentors will also engage actively and guide the contributions to ensure technical correctness and rigour. 1. Agricultural intelligence dashboard demonstrated for the Nashik district, to study patterns of cropping intensification and relate them to commodity prices and mandi locations. As you can guess, this was by an economist! Meet [Sanket Gharat](https://github.com/metalwings-design). - Check out the [live demo](https://nashik-onion-dynamics-c45btfoncjezeeoecgxpn4.streamlit.app/) - [Github repo](https://github.com/metalwings-design/nashik-onion-dynamics) of the dashboard - [Video recording](https://youtu.be/-DvfvyavPAg) - Next steps: Generalize for near-automation of generating similar dashboards for any district. 2. Full listing of the tanks in Anekal and layering biodiversity data pulled from the citizen science platforms, eBird and iNaturalist. The idea was proposed by [Kaustubh Rau](https://azimpremjiuniversity.edu.in/people/kaustubh-rau) who has been maintaining the [Tanks of Anekal](https://tanksofanekal.in/) website, and taken up by [Anoop Asranna](https://www.linkedin.com/in/anoopasranna/). - Check out the [demo](https://www.cse.iitd.ernet.in/~aseth/temp/anekal_all_lakes_2026_2.html) - [Code and documentation](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1jQliY2WPOp-Y49om443M1_vy25jdxExt?usp=drive_link) with several steps of data cleaning - [Video recording](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBHI8ZdPPE0) - Next steps: Generalize to enhance the [waterbody dashboard](https://www.explorer.core-stack.org/) on the CoRE stack to also show biodiversity information alongside climate, land-use, and surface water availability changes, and integrate with the Tanks of Anekal website. 3. _Fields_ app, which lets users define various geospatial layers of interest, makes the layers available offline, and lets people validate these layers. To be enhanced into supporting communities to build PBRs. Meet [Trishal Kumar](https://github.com/tkkr6895), the creator of _Fields_! - [Report](https://github.com/tkkr6895/fields/blob/main/docs/App_Demonstration_Report.pdf) with screenshots - [Github repo](https://github.com/tkkr6895/fields) to build your own APK for your layers and areas of interest - [Video recording](https://youtu.be/9NW6fQj8ACE) - Next steps: Build _Fields_ into a full fledged product that allows users to contribute groundtruth labels, export the datasets, and draw insights from the data. More details here - [First round of Innovation Challenge Advances – CoRE Stack](https://core-stack.org/first-round-of-innovation-challenge-advances/)