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Challenge

Build a Coastal Flood Declaration and DEM Link Correlator

Correlate historical OpenFEMA coastal disaster declarations with STAC metadata referencing digital elevation models. Compile asset administrative histories and retrieve elevation metadata links to support subsequent manual engineering reviews.

Data ScienceHosted by Vera
Challenge brief

What you are building

The core problem, expected build, and operating context for this challenge.

Correlate historical OpenFEMA coastal disaster declarations with STAC metadata referencing digital elevation models. Compile asset administrative histories and retrieve elevation metadata links to support subsequent manual engineering reviews.

Coastal Risk Analyst

Query OpenFEMA API for historical county-level coastal storm disaster declarations.

Retrieve corresponding STAC Items referencing coastal elevation datasets for impacted counties.

Extract valid elevation asset URLs from STAC metadata intersecting the asset location bounding box.

Generate a coastal administrative history table and data compilation report for engineering review.

Web table view displaying coastal assets, county disaster declaration counts, and DEM STAC reference links.

Query OpenFEMA v2/DisasterDeclarationsSummaries filtering by coastal state/county, and fetch DEM STAC Item metadata from mock SpatioTemporal Asset Catalog files. Starter examples below are synthetic. They are not downloaded records.

FEMA OpenFEMA Applies OpenFEMA $select, $filter, and $orderby parameters to isolate coastal storm declarations by county.

dspy, requests, pystac, fastapi. DSPy compiles robust prompt pipelines to extract accurate metadata links and map disaster summaries to asset locations. Hosted or local model supporting DSPy signature compilation for text and JSON metadata extraction.

Submit runnable source, pinned dependencies, setup commands, a working interface, example outputs, and a recorded end-to-end demo. Include tests and an action log.

Fetches disaster declarations filtering by coastal storm incident types and specified counties.

Extracts valid asset URLs from STAC metadata intersecting the requested asset bounding box.

Flags compiled records for manual engineering assessment based on non-zero declaration counts.

```json [ { "input": { "asset_id": "PORT-DOCK-12", "county": "CoastalCounty", "fema_incident_type": "Coastal Storm" }, "expected_output": { "asset_id": "PORT-DOCK-12", "county_declarations": 1, "dem_stac_href": "https://example.com/dem/12.tif", "requires_engineering_review": true, "_record_type": "Simplified synthetic app record, not a complete official schema file" } }, { "input": { "asset_id": "PORT-WHARF-03", "county": "InlandCounty", "fema_incident_type": "Coastal Storm" }, "expected_output": { "asset_id": "PORT-WHARF-03", "county_declarations": 0, "dem_stac_href": null, "requires_engineering_review": false, "_record_type": "Simplified synthetic app record, not a complete official schema file" } } ] ```

Analysis serves planning studies only; external actions and engineering assessments remain mock or human-reviewed. Use mock external writes. Require human review before any real deployment.

Rules

Participation guide

Analysis serves planning studies only; external actions and engineering assessments remain mock or human-reviewed. Use mock external writes and human review.

Delivery guide

How work is evaluated

Evaluation

Fetches disaster declarations filtering by coastal storm incident types and specified counties. Extracts valid asset URLs from STAC metadata intersecting the requested asset bounding box. Flags compiled records for manual engineering assessment based on non-zero declaration counts.

Submission format

Runnable source, pinned dependencies, setup commands, working interface, example outputs, recorded demo, tests, and action logs.

Datasets

Challenge datasets

Public datasets, plus the private datasets you have access to.

Evaluation rubric

How submissions are scored

These dimensions define what the evaluator checks and which criteria separate a passable run from a strong one.

Dimensions
4 scoring checks
Binary
1 pass or fail dimensions
Ordinal
3 scaled dimensions
Dimension 1

Complete workflow

Query OpenFEMA API for historical county-level coastal storm disaster declarations. Retrieve corresponding STAC Items referencing coastal elevation datasets for impacted counties. Extract valid elevation asset URLs from STAC metadata intersecting the asset location bounding box. Generate a coastal administrative history table and data compilation report for engineering review.

Score scale
012
Score 0

Missing or incorrect.

Score 1

Partly complete, with documented gaps.

Score 2

Complete, with reproducible evidence.

Dimension 2

Correctness and evidence

Fetches disaster declarations filtering by coastal storm incident types and specified counties. Extracts valid asset URLs from STAC metadata intersecting the requested asset bounding box. Flags compiled records for manual engineering assessment based on non-zero declaration counts.

Score scale
012
Score 0

Missing or incorrect.

Score 1

Partly complete, with documented gaps.

Score 2

Complete, with reproducible evidence.

Dimension 3

Review interface

Web table view displaying coastal assets, county disaster declaration counts, and DEM STAC reference links.

Score scale
012
Score 0

Missing or incorrect.

Score 1

Partly complete, with documented gaps.

Score 2

Complete, with reproducible evidence.

Dimension 4

Safe execution

Analysis serves planning studies only; external actions and engineering assessments remain mock or human-reviewed.

Binary check

This dimension contributes its full weight only when the submission satisfies the requirement. Partial credit is not awarded.

Learning goals

What you should walk away with

  • Query OpenFEMA API for historical county-level coastal storm disaster declarations.

  • Retrieve corresponding STAC Items referencing coastal elevation datasets for impacted counties.

  • Extract valid elevation asset URLs from STAC metadata intersecting the asset location bounding box.

  • Generate a coastal administrative history table and data compilation report for engineering review.

Resources and assets

Reference links and supporting material

Dataset notes

Query OpenFEMA v2/DisasterDeclarationsSummaries filtering by coastal state/county, and fetch DEM STAC Item metadata from mock SpatioTemporal Asset Catalog files. Supplied starter examples are synthetic, not source extracts.

Challenge setup

Configuration summary for this challenge.

Challenge input

Input details are not configured.

DSPy

Prompt and LM program optimization framework.

Evaluated output

No output checks are configured.

Evaluation checks
  • Query OpenFEMA API for historical county-level coastal storm disaster declarations. Retrieve corresponding...
  • Fetches disaster declarations filtering by coastal storm incident types and specified counties. Extracts va...
  • Web table view displaying coastal assets, county disaster declaration counts, and DEM STAC reference links.
Configured evaluation evidence
  • 2 public reference cases
Configured runtime
  • 3 configured tools

Summary shows the first task, up to three tools, and up to three evidence items. Open the technical recipe to view all configured items.

View technical recipe

Configured tools

Action Space
  • DSPy · Optional
Training Infra
  • DSPy · Optional
Orchestration
  • DSPy · Optional

Evaluation contract

  • Complete workflow · Weight 40
  • Correctness and evidence · Weight 30
  • Review interface · Weight 20
  • Safe execution · Weight 10

Reference cases

  • 2 public reference cases

Workflow tasks

No workflow tasks are configured.

Recipe freeze marker

No recipe freeze time is recorded.

Frequently Asked Questions about Build a Coastal Flood Declaration and DEM Link Correlator