The Gulf of Maine environment changes on a weekly basis due to fisheries, environmental conditions, harmful blooms, climate change and many other aspects of the environment. Researchers monitor such changes with real-time data streams to help inform decisions relating to fishery and aquaculture management, recreation, endangered species conservation, and many other applications. Converting data streams into text that summarizes these changes would facilitate the accessibility and use of this information by a broad audience.

To help with the cause, the goal of this Hackathon is to develop a Natural Language Generation system able to convert the structured data into fluent and adequate reports, which can be read by the stakeholders, such as mariners, marine industry members, policy makers, and the general public. Examples of structured data and reports will be provided to help the participants.

The event will be done in collaboration with the Tandy Center for Ocean Forecasting at the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences (@TandyForecast, @BigelowLab).