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A2A Challenge: Fast Intelligence from Flowing News

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Award: $40,000

Active Solvers: 101

Deadline: 13 Apr 2021 23:59 EDT

Tags:  Reduction to Practice (RTP), Business & Entrepreneurship,

Computer/Info. Technology, Engineering/Design, Math/Statistics

Challenge ID:  9934319

Challenge Detail () Solutions () Other

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Your signed Solver Agreements:
 Challenge Detail ()
 Solver Terms of Use
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Detailed Description and Requirements Challenge-specific Agreement
(challenge/f5710b82775e4c1e99abd377d0
BACKGROUND
Challenge-specific Agreement
Staying informed about events that impact markets and Summary
business is critical to success in any field. With the ever-
increasing flow of news and information over multiple Information for
channels and forms of media, keeping up-to-date and Academics
informed about the latest events is both easier and more
If you are a US University or
difficult. Easier because news can be obtained anywhere at College Professor, student
any time, but more difficult due to the need to sort and sift (graduate or undergraduate),
through the vast amount of incoming information in order to or you work in a similar type
extract and contextualize valuable intelligence. of institution, read important
information before
The Generation and Trading Business Unit of A2A, the Seeker submitting a solution.
for this Challenge, trades energy commodities such as fuels,
Frequently asked questions
electricity, and environmental certificates on domestic and (https://support.wazoku.com/
international markets. Commodity prices are volatile and hc/en-
market expectations about demand and supply can influence us/categories/360001771617-
their upward and downward movements. Trader desks try to InnoCentive)
anticipate price changes to close long/short positions,
minimizing company losses or, sometimes, to open
speculative positions for gaining from price movements.  Example - EVENTS_titles an…

News is an important source of information to improve trader

understanding of what is happening on the markets and to
fine tune trading strategy. Several news providers such as
Refinitive and Dataminr already gather news and filter the
massive flow of data supplying trading desks with the news
items based on selected topics of interest. However, traders
are still required to read, verify and analyze the subset of
news to highlight the meaningful events. In fact, before taking
actions on the markets, a trader must:

Read the flowing news to highlight single events

Highlight a new event
Group the news related to the same event
If necessary, collect additional information to check
validity
Contextualize events by correlating events belonging to
the same story
Map events and stories and categorize by type:
localization – country, continent, market area, etc.
proximity to energy assets such as power plants,
electrical grid, pipelines, harbors, fuel storages, oil
and gas wells, coal mines, etc. that can be directly
or indirectly impacted by events
reference market

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weather related (it can influence both supply and Search

demand)
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Home economy related (it can influence demand) Dashboard
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Classify the impact (energy supply or energy demand or
undefined)
 Understand evolution of events and stories during time
Make synthesis and take the best actions on the markets
(buy/sell/stay)

Unfortunately, traders are often busy in trading desk

operations, have no time to continuously process the news.
Therefore tools to automate the process outlined above
would prove extremely useful in maximizing efficiency and
outcome for the trading desk.
 

DATA

Please see the attached file Example – EVENTS_titles and public

infos.xlsx for examples of four events, corresponding news
article titles, and example enriched content as requested for
this Challenge. Solvers are responsible for finding and utilizing
data sources for the context enrichment and mapping
required in this Challenge. The only input provided by the
Seeker will be titles of news stories filtered by keywords of
interest to the Seeker.

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THE CHALLENGE Search

As illustrated in the scheme above, the Seeker is interested in
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Home Dashboard
page) or methods that can support their
exploring tools, techniques, dashboard)
trading activities by turning the flowing news into insightful
 events and accelerating context comprehension and decision-
making. The objective is to support decision making in real
time helping traders to manage and classify the flow of events
and to rapidly understand and react to what is happening.
The target is correct highlighting, validation, and classification
of events and stories. Events are the single facts reported by
the flow of titles provided by news providers (such as
Refinitive and Dataminr utilized by the Seeker), while stories
are sets of connected events. For example, the story might be
about gas supply interruption in central Europe and such a
story includes multiple events ranging from an explosion that
damaged a pipeline to the pipeline repair and its restoration
to service. When classifying events it is important to know the
event time stamp (different from the title time stamp) and if:

The event is old it means it was already highlighted

The event is new but belongs to an old story that was
started by a previous event
The event is new and does not belong to an old story it
starts a new story but must be validated using validation
criteria proposed by the Solver

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. There are two main focus activities
that submissions for the Challenge must address using data
sources found by the Solver – context enrichment, and
context mapping – as described below. Solvers are
responsible for finding and utilizing any data source used by
their proposed algorithm.

Context Enrichment – propose and implement an effective

way to discover what is happening:

Read the flowing news titles and identify relevant news

items
Collect additional information from public or paid
sources
Highlight events
Distinguish among past, present, or future events or
among new events related to past, present or future
stories
Highlight new events
Describe/Label events
Find connections among different events and identify
stories
Distinguish new events related to past, present or future
stories
Highlight new stories
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Describe/label stories Search

The proposal of the way for an insightful labeling is part of the
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Context Mapping – propose an effective way to visualize and

 show collected insights. Information collected during context
enrichment may also be used for context mapping and
proposed algorithms must be able to extract tags and
features that fully describe an event or story and its evolution
over time. Commonly used tags to judge the impact of an
event in the energy sector are:

Localization (for example, country, continent, market

area)
Proximity to energy assets (for example, powerplants,
electrical grid, pipelines, harbors, fuel storage, oil and
gas wells, coal mines) that can be directly or indirectly
impacted by events
Reference market
Weather related (it can influence both supply and
demand)
Economy related (it can influence demand)
Type of impact (energy supply or energy demand or
undefined)
Modifications of events and stories during time

Data sources to enable tagging of events or stories must be

proposed by the Solver. Using the previous example of a gas
pipeline explosion the identification of pipelines and markets
impacted by the explosion is within the scope of the
algorithm. The tags listed above are necessary but may not be
enough to provide a comprehensive description of events and
stories and proposed algorithms should have the capability to
identify and optimize tags to fully describe an event or story.
Algorithms should be able to create and update a database of
energy assets identified in the enrichment phase for use in
the tagging and mapping phase. Examples of public sources
of data about electricity and gas infrastructure are
https://transparency.entsog.eu/
(https://transparency.entsog.eu/) and
https://transparency.entsoe.eu/
(https://transparency.entsoe.eu/).

Output from the proposed algorithm should include:

Context Enrichment

Title
Title timestamp
Event name
Event timestamp
Event status (validated/not validated)
Event type (new/old)
Story name
Progressive story timestamp
Story status (validated/not validated)
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Story type (new/old) Search

Event/Story link
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Context Mapping page) dashboard)

Event name
 Event brief description
List of tag types considered to describe an event
List of tags that fully describe the event and enable
analysis
Story name
Story brief description at each timestamp
List of tag types considered to describe a story at each
timestamp
List of tags that fully describe the story and enable
analysis at each timestamp

Data Visualization

Interface that provide a synthesis of events/stories

Interface that enable monitoring of events/stories during
time
Description of interface features to configure and adapt
data visualization
Concept/Mockup can be accepted

Submissions to this Challenge must be an algorithm that

meets the following Technical Requirements:

1. Automatically accomplish Context Enrichment,

Context Mapping, and Data Visualization as described
above for article titles from a news feed. The algorithm
must replicate and automate the process outlined in the
above scheme and visualize the map of insights.
 
2. Implemented in Python and shared as a zip folder or
other archive format.
 

Evaluation Procedure and Criteria

Submissions will be evaluated in terms of minimum

requirements and performance of the tasks described above
by examination of the detailed description of the proposed
solution and the Solver-provided output from the proposed
algorithm applied to the example news titles from the
attached file Example – EVENTS_titles and public infos.xlsx.
Based on this initial review, the Seeker will request source
code and/or executables for the top ranked submissions with
the purpose of running the algorithm against a new set of
representative news titles. Solvers chosen for this step must
be able to provide source code and/or executables along with
detailed instructions on installation and execution including a
requirements file describing necessary libraries and library
versions within 5 days of such request.

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Ranking of submissions for each stage will be based on the Search

following criteria:
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page) events based on the provided
Number of highlighted dashboard)
dataset titles
 Number of titles per event
Number of events per story (or, alternatively, number of
links among highlighted events)
Time necessary for context enrichments (update of
“context enrichment” file/database)
Time necessary for context mapping (update of “context
enrichment” file/database)
Number of data sources alternative to search engines (
for example google) used for context
enrichment/mapping
Percentage of data sources that are open source or
freely available (among the proposed alternative
sources)
Unsupervised-learning capability to optimize event/story
tagging/featuring (Yes/No)
Distribution of tags in term number and type per
events/stories
Usability of data tagging strategy for
classification/clustering (qualitative)
Effectiveness of data visualization strategy (qualitative)
Flexibility in data visualization configuration (qualitative)
 

Project Criteria
The submitted proposal should include the following:

1. 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. The description
must explain how the algorithm replicates and
automates the process outlined in the described scheme
and must include at the least a mockup/example of the
visualization of the map of insights.
 
2. Output from the proposed algorithm applied to the
example set of news titles in the attachment Example –
EVENTS_titles and public infos.xlsx. Output must be in the
form described in the Detailed Description of the
Challenge.
 
3. 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.

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The proposal should not include any personal identifying Search

information (name, username, company, address, phone,
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Solvers may consider as their Intellectual Property they do not
want to share.

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.  If multiple proposals meet all the Technical
Requirements, the Seeker reserves the right to award only
the solution which they believe best addresses the
requirements of the traders. 
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. 

Submissions to this Challenge must be received by 11:59 PM

(US Eastern Time) on April 13, 2021. Late submissions will
not be considered.
 

ABOUT THE SEEKER

 

A2A SpA – Generation and Trading Business Unit. The activity

of the Generation and Trading Business Unit is related to the
management of the generation plants portfolio (total installed
capacity of 8.8 GW) of the Group with the dual purpose of
maximizing the availability and efficiency of the plants,
minimizing operating and maintenance costs (O&M) and
maximizing the profit deriving from the management of the
energy portfolio through the purchase and sale of electricity
and fuels (gaseous and non-gaseous) and environmental
certificates on domestic and international wholesale markets.
This Business Unit also includes the activity of trading on
domestic and foreign markets of all energy commodities (gas,
electricity, environmental certificates).
https://www.a2a.eu/en/group (https://www.a2a.eu/en/group)

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