Coding.Waterkant Hackathon - Introduction 2: Windfinder

Jonas Mielck -

Over the next few weeks we will introduce you all out there to our partners for the Coding.Waterkant Hackathon which will take place on 5 and 6 June. Without our partners from various sectors and with different backgrounds the Hackathon would not be possible - so thank you all very much in advance ?.

What is windfinder.com

Windfinder is a leading global weather service for wind, wave and weather related outdoor sports. The Windfinder App combines accurate forecasts for 45,000 water sports locations with real time observations from more than 21,000 weather stations worldwide. Windfinder provides the information anytime and anywhere.

Windfinder provides two datasets that can be used in the Hackathon. The first dataset contains weather station data of 7 popular surf spots (Kiel Lighthouse, Skt. Peter-Ording, Warnemünde, Port Said Airport, Molasses Reef, Renesse West, Hvide Sande) for the years 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019 with hourly measured data. This dataset is in .csv format and contains 33,928 observations.

The second dataset is about daily pageviews at windfinder.com of 7 popular surf spots (Kiel Lighthouse, Skt. Peter-Ording, Warnemünde, Port Said Airport, Molasses Reef, Renesse West, Hvide Sande) for the years 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019. This dataset is in .csv format and contains 1461 observations.

Can you help the windfinder.com team increasing their forecast quality for good surfing days?

The team is interested in prediction of days or times with good surfing conditions at a surf spot. On a good surfing day for a particular surf spot, the number of page-views on the site with the forecasts for that spot usually increases. The number of page-views shall be used as a proxy for the quality of the surfing day, in order to improve the forecast of a good day. Thus the locally very different weather influences on a spot, such as thermals, wind direction, cloudiness etc., which are usually best known by the users, shall be considered for the forecast of good windsurfing days.

We can hardly wait for the event to begin.

Stay tuned, follow our introduction posts over the following weeks and if you haven't registered - do so under the following link: coding.waterkant.sh.