Staying informed about events that impact markets and business is critical to success in any field. With the ever-increasing flow of news and information over multiple channels and forms of media, keeping up-to-date and informed about the latest events is both easier and more difficult. Easier because news can be obtained anywhere at any time, but more difficult due to the need to sort and sift through the vast amount of incoming information in order to extract and contextualize valuable intelligence. The Seeker is interested in exploring new tools, techniques, or methods to reduce the effort required to process the news and aid in turning the flowing news into insightful intelligence about events that impact their business. Proposed solutions should focus on both automated extraction and effective visualization of insightful events from news flows and be presented in the form of an implemented algorithm.
The Generation and Trading Business Unit of A2A, the Seeker for this Challenge, trades energy commodities such as fuels, electricity, and environmental certificates on domestic and international markets. Commodity prices are volatile and market expectations about demand and supply can influence their upward and downward movements. Understanding what is happening in the world is essential for promptly reacting to price changes to avoid losses and/or earn profits. Unfortunately, continuously monitoring what is happening worldwide is time consuming and commodity traders are often busy in trading desk operations. The Seeker is interested in exploring tools, techniques, or methods that can support their trading activities by turning the flowing news into insightful events and accelerating context comprehension and decision-making. Solvers are asked to develop and implement an algorithm that ingests news titles, identifies relevant events, collects additional information about those events, and then effectively presents the collected insights using easy to understand visualizations.
A submission to the Challenge should include the following:
- A detailed description of the proposed solution addressing specific Technical Requirements presented in the Detailed Description of the Challenge. This should also include a thorough description of the algorithm used in the solution accompanied by a well-articulated rationale for the method employed.
- Output from the proposed algorithm applied to a Solver-supplied data set as well as the data set itself. Output must be in the form described in the Detailed Description of the Challenge.
- For the top ranked submissions, the Seeker may request source code and/or an executable with sufficient documentation to enable the Seeker to compile, execute the algorithm, and validate the method using additional data sets.
The Challenge award is contingent upon theoretical evaluation of the method/algorithm by the Seeker, and validation by the Seeker of the submitted reduction to practice solution.
To receive an award, the Solvers will not have to transfer their exclusive IP rights to the Seeker. Instead, Solvers will grant to the Seeker a non-exclusive license to practice their solutions.
Awards:- $40,000
Deadline:- 13-04-2021
