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Challenge

Build an OpenFEMA Agricultural Flood Declaration Tracker

Track repetitive agricultural disaster declarations across farming counties using OpenFEMA historical endpoints. Identify chronically vulnerable cropland and formulate structured soil drainage adaptation plans.

Data ScienceHosted by Vera
Challenge brief

What you are building

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

Track repetitive agricultural disaster declarations across farming counties using OpenFEMA historical endpoints. Identify chronically vulnerable cropland and formulate structured soil drainage adaptation plans.

Agricultural Extension Risk Officer

Poll OpenFEMA DisasterDeclarationsSummaries filtered by incidentType Flood and designated area.

Map declarations to regional USDA agricultural soil classification zones.

Compute repeat flood return rates across multi-decade farming histories.

Draft tailored agricultural drainage and crop diversification adaptation recommendations.

Web dashboard with county-level agricultural flood recurrence graphs, soil type overlays, and printable adaptation briefs.

Access OpenFEMA API via HTTP queries using $filter and $select parameters. Cache sample county disaster declarations locally. Starter examples below are synthetic. They are not downloaded records.

FEMA OpenFEMA Utilizes OpenFEMA API URI parameters $select, $filter=incidentType eq 'Flood', and $orderby=declarationDate.

haystack, requests, pydantic. Constructs document processing pipelines that integrate tabular disaster statistics into retrieval-augmented adaptation briefs. Local or hosted LLM compatible with Haystack OpenAIChatGenerator or HuggingFace pipelines.

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.

Executes OpenFEMA queries with compliant ISO-8601 date filters.

Aggregates flood disaster frequencies per agricultural county.

Synthesizes soil drainage adaptation proposals matching local crop conditions.

```json [ { "input": { "county_fips": "19001", "state": "IA", "crop_type": "Corn", "flood_declarations_count": 5, "soil_drainage_class": "POORLY_DRAINED" }, "expected_output": { "county_fips": "19001", "recurrence_tier": "HIGH_FREQUENCY", "drainage_intervention_required": true, "recommended_practice": "PATTERN_TILE_DRAINAGE_AND_COVER_CROPS", "adaptation_readiness_score": 0.88 } }, { "input": { "county_fips": "19003", "state": "IA", "crop_type": "Soybeans", "flood_declarations_count": 0, "soil_drainage_class": "WELL_DRAINED" }, "expected_output": { "county_fips": "19003", "recurrence_tier": "LOW_FREQUENCY", "drainage_intervention_required": false, "recommended_practice": "STANDARD_CONSERVATION_TILLAGE", "adaptation_readiness_score": 0.22 } } ] ```

Supplies advisory agronomic recommendations; does not furnish engineering warranties for drainage installations. Use mock external writes. Require human review before any real deployment.

Rules

Participation guide

Supplies advisory agronomic recommendations; does not furnish engineering warranties for drainage installations. Use mock external writes and human review.

Delivery guide

How work is evaluated

Evaluation

Executes OpenFEMA queries with compliant ISO-8601 date filters. Aggregates flood disaster frequencies per agricultural county. Synthesizes soil drainage adaptation proposals matching local crop conditions.

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

Poll OpenFEMA DisasterDeclarationsSummaries filtered by incidentType Flood and designated area. Map declarations to regional USDA agricultural soil classification zones. Compute repeat flood return rates across multi-decade farming histories. Draft tailored agricultural drainage and crop diversification adaptation recommendations.

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

Executes OpenFEMA queries with compliant ISO-8601 date filters. Aggregates flood disaster frequencies per agricultural county. Synthesizes soil drainage adaptation proposals matching local crop conditions.

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 dashboard with county-level agricultural flood recurrence graphs, soil type overlays, and printable adaptation briefs.

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

Supplies advisory agronomic recommendations; does not furnish engineering warranties for drainage installations.

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

  • Poll OpenFEMA DisasterDeclarationsSummaries filtered by incidentType Flood and designated area.

  • Map declarations to regional USDA agricultural soil classification zones.

  • Compute repeat flood return rates across multi-decade farming histories.

  • Draft tailored agricultural drainage and crop diversification adaptation recommendations.

Resources and assets

Reference links and supporting material

Dataset notes

Access OpenFEMA API via HTTP queries using $filter and $select parameters. Cache sample county disaster declarations locally. Supplied starter examples are synthetic, not source extracts.

Challenge setup

Configuration summary for this challenge.

Challenge input

Input details are not configured.

Haystack

Framework

Evaluated output

No output checks are configured.

Evaluation checks
  • Poll OpenFEMA DisasterDeclarationsSummaries filtered by incidentType Flood and designated area. Map declara...
  • Executes OpenFEMA queries with compliant ISO-8601 date filters. Aggregates flood disaster frequencies per a...
  • Web dashboard with county-level agricultural flood recurrence graphs, soil type overlays, and printable ada...
Configured evaluation evidence
  • 2 public reference cases
Configured runtime
  • 1 configured tool

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
  • Haystack · 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 an OpenFEMA Agricultural Flood Declaration Tracker