DINAcon Awards Nominee

swissguesser

Project Category: »Open-Learning« Award

We (RalphStraumann/David Oesch) created a Github Action based bot that creates imagery-based map excerpts within a spatially bounded region. The bot then broadcasts these map excerpts, inviting users to venture a guess as to the depicted location. After a certain delay the bot provides the correct solution. In a later phase, the bot may also judge user submissions (guesses) and aggregate the information into a type of leaderboard. How does @swissguesser twitter bot work now? We tweet three times a day an aerial photo, surface or relief map of Switzerland. Twitter users reply as soon as possible with a guess of the municipality or place shown in the image. The first user to submit a correct answer, @swissguesser will score, mention and congratulate . Scores are announced via the bot or via https://swissguesser.github.io/swissguesser/leaderboard.html More info under https://swissguesser.github.io/swissguesser/about.html

 

Why should this Project win a DINAcon Award?

Because --- data literacy is fun! Swissguesser, a twitterbot, uses gamefication to bring geodata and Switzerland closer to the user. The bot was programmed in Python using the APIs (programming interfaces) of Twitter and the Federal Spatial Data Infrastructure (FSDI, geo.admin.ch). It uses OpenData from Federal Office of Topography swisstopo. The bot runs fully automated in the cloud. The answers of participants are evaluated with a FuzzyStringMatching and some further criteria and classified as correct or wrong. The data management for the ranking is done in SQLite.