AI for urban heat resilience hackathon

Overview

The AI for Urban Heat Resilience Hackathon 2026 is a two-day, in-person technical hackathon that brings together developers, startups, researchers, and students to build AI-driven solutions addressing urban heat risk, a growing climate and public-health challenge.

Participants will design and prototype data- and compute-intensive AI workflows that infer high-resolution land-surface temperature and urban thermal risk from lower-resolution satellite imagery, using drone-based thermal data and auxiliary urban datasets. The hackathon emphasizes applied machine learning, scalable cloud computing, and responsible AI for real-world decision-making in climate resilience and public health.

The deadline to apply is March 5, 2026.

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Prizes

Top-performing teams will be recognized and awarded at the close of the hackathon:

🥇 1st Place: $3,000

🥈 2nd Place: $2,000

🥉 3rd Place: $1,000

⭐ Most Innovative / Most Collaborative Team: $500

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Objectives

The hackathon aims to:

• Advance AI and machine-learning methods for thermal downscaling and inference
• Enable integration of multi-modal geospatial datasets (satellite, drone, and urban context data)
• Provide hands-on experience with scalable, cloud-based AI infrastructure
• Foster collaboration between academia, industry, and startups
• Produce technically sound prototypes with pathways to real-world deployment

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Challenge focus areas

Teams will work within a shared technical framework and may focus on one or more of the following areas:

• Thermal Downscaling & Super-Resolution: AI models that infer fine-scale thermal surfaces from coarse satellite inputs.
• Multi-Source Data Fusion: Combining satellite imagery, drone thermal scans, and auxiliary urban datasets.
• Urban Heat Risk Mapping: Translating thermal outputs into interpretable risk metrics relevant to climate resilience and public health.
• Model Efficiency & Scalability: Designing computationally efficient pipelines suitable for large-scale or resource-constrained settings.
• Responsible & Equitable AI: Addressing bias, transparency, and ethical data use in climate and health applications.

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Who should apply

This hackathon is intended for participants with strong technical backgrounds who are comfortable working in programming and data science environments. We welcome applications from:

• Developers and software engineers
• Startups and early-stage technology teams working in AI, climate tech, health tech, or urban analytics
• Data scientists and AI/ML practitioners
• Graduate students and advanced undergraduates with solid technical training
• Researchers with experience in Python-based workflows, geospatial analysis, vision foundation models, cloud computing, and CNNs
• Participants should be comfortable using programming tools and software (e.g., Python, Jupyter notebooks, and version control systems) and working in collaborative, cloud-based development environments
• Intermediate-to-advanced technical experience is highly recommended, and teams are expected to demonstrate clear technical capacity

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Data & technical environment

Participants will work with curated datasets that may include:

• Satellite-derived land surface temperature products
• High-resolution drone-based thermal imagery
• Auxiliary urban datasets, for example, building data
• Weather datasets

All development will take place in a cloud-based AWS environment, with pre-configured team accounts, centralized data access, and collaborative notebook workflows. Pre-hackathon technical onboarding materials and documentation will be provided.

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Mentorship & support

Teams will receive technical and domain guidance from mentors with expertise in:

• Artificial intelligence and machine learning
• Geospatial analysis and remote sensing
• Climate resilience and public-health applications
• Cloud infrastructure and MLOps

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Deliverables

By the end of the hackathon, teams are expected to produce:

• A working technical prototype or proof-of-concept
• Clear documentation of methods, data usage, and assumptions
• A short final presentation or live demo

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Application

🔗 Application Link

⏳ Application Deadline: March 13, 2026

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Code of conduct

All participants are expected to adhere to a professional code of conduct emphasizing respect, inclusivity, collaboration, and responsible data use. A formal Code of Conduct will be shared with accepted participants.