Hitachi Hokudai Lab. & Hokkaido University Contest 2022

• NEW! February 14th, 2023: Prize winners are requested to complete the form as soon as possible with the information required for prize delivery. The deadline is within a few days.
• February 8th, 2023: Emails sent to winners and winners. If you have not received it, please check your spam folder.
• February 8th, 2023: An email requesting a summary report of your algorithm has been sent to the top 10 winners of both Question A and Question B. See the “Prizes” section of this page for details.
• January 24th, 2023: The final ranking obtained by the system test has been announced. Please see "Final Ranking" on this page.
• January 20th, 2023: The summary guidelines and the summary examples have been announced. Please see "Prizes" on this page.
• December 23rd, 2022: License information (MIT) has been added to the toolkit.
• December 9th, 2022: Registration opened. Please register from here.
• December 2nd, 2022: The contest will be open for registration soon.
• December 2nd, 2022: Follow us on Twitter #2HC2022.

All personal information will be properly managed by Hokkaido University and Hitachi, Ltd. A third party designated with the Privacy Mark will distribute the award money and special gifts to the top-ranked contestants.

• A marathon-type programming contest will be held in collaboration with Hitachi Ltd. and Hokkaido University. (Hosted by Hitachi Hokudai Lab, Center for Exploratory Research, Hitachi, Ltd. and Hokkaido University, in cooperation with Kansai University)
• The problems in this contest were not created by AtCoder, Inc. but by Hitachi, Ltd. and Hokkaido University in cooperation with Kansai University.
• This contest will be held from December 23rd, 2022 to January 22nd, 2023 .
• The contest organizers are a group of researchers at Hitachi Hokkaido University Laboratory and Hokkaido University who develop novel services for the attainment of sustainable local communities in collaboration with local governments by exploring new mathematical concepts for social creativity. (See the last section of this page Background for those who are interested in the research mission behind the programming contest for further details.)
• There is a serious shortage of farmers in rural areas where the population is both aging and declining. Although the introduction of smart agricultural machinery utilizing robot technology and ICT is expected to improve the efficiency of agriculture, high implementation costs are a concern. Therefore, minimizing the initial investment as much as possible by leasing farm machinery and promoting services that maximize equipment utilization through sharing will be vital in the future.
• This contest will be held on the theme of algorithms for optimization problems (spatio-temporal optimization problems) involving multiple complex factors (e.g., working time, movement of farm machinery, and appropriate work timing) that seek practical solutions to improve work planning efficiency for agricultural machinery sharing and other applications.
• Hitachi Hokudai Lab and Hokkaido University have held similar marathon-type contests over the past five years (2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021). (1st contest in 2017 here and here ,second in 2018 here , 1st in 2019 here , 2nd in 2019 here , in 2020 here and 2021 here).
• We set themes about pretreatment technology for annealing machines to solve combinatorial optimization problems in 2017 and 2018, about spatio-temporal (dynamic) optimization technology for a shopping support service in 2019, and about regional energy systems in 2020 and 2021.
• In past contests, a large number of participants submitted ideas and algorithms that surpassed conventional methods. In addition, in all the contests we have held so far, the results of some of the winners (mainly top-ranking winners) have been presented at international conferences.
  For example, the graph conversion algorithm devised in the 2017 contest was implemented at Hokkaido University and Hitachi in conjunction with the contest winner, and the results were presented at the TPNC2018 and published in Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science.
  In addition, the results of the efficiency improvement algorithm for the shopping support services devised in the 2019 contest were presented at NOLTA2020 , and we presented the nanogrid and EV mutual cooperation algorithm devised in the 2020 contest at IEEE EPEC2021.

• Anyone is eligible to participate in the contest, regardless of age, gender, nationality, or affiliation. The contest is open for registration until the contest closes. To register for participation, click here.
• The contests will be held online for one month from December 23rd, 2022 until January 22nd, 2023 .
• We will prepare two different problems (A and B).
• During the contest period, participants may submit as many answers as they like.  However, the server may reject further submissions to the same problem for one hour after submitting a solution. (Submission restrictions will be applied for each problem.)
• Sharing ideas through Twitter or blogs during the contests period is explicitly encouraged . Please use the contest hashtag #2HC2022 for doing so. Participants may upload their own source code to a source code sharing site such as github. They can also solve problems based on ideas that  others have posted.*
*When publishing ideas and source code, please specify a license with few restrictions on reuse, such as the MIT license or  the modified BSD license. If a third party creates an award-winning algorithm on the basis of previously shared ideas or source code, the score will be attributed to the algorithm of the third party.
• Submissions to problems A and B will be ranked separately in accordance with a score specified in the task section. In the unlikely event that two participants receive an identical score, the participant with the earlier submission date will be ranked higher. A participant’s submission date is defined as the date of the final top-scoring submission.
• We will prepare sample code for test case generation and score calculation programs. This tool works in an environment where C++ and Python can be executed. Operation tests will be done on WSL and Ubuntu.
• After the 1-month contest concludes, the final standings will be determined by individually running system tests on previously unseen input using a candidate’s final submission to problems A and B. Note that the test cases used for the system test are different from those provided during the contest period.

• We will award the following prizes and special gifts for the top-scoring contestants.
• Problem A

1st place	100,000JPY
2nd place	30,000JPY
3rd place	10,000JPY
4th-10th	Special award ① (items from Hokkaido University and Hitachi Ltd.)
11th-30th	Special award ② (items from Hokkaido University and Hitachi Ltd.)

• Problem B

1st place	300,000JPY
2nd place	100,000JPY
3rd place	30,000JPY
4th-10th	Special award ③ (items from Hokkaido University and Hitachi Ltd.)
11th-30th	Special award ④ (items from Hokkaido University and Hitachi Ltd.)

• All prize winners will also be awarded with an original T-shirt and sticker. Special awards ① and stickers will be additionally presented to ten randomly selected winners from Problems A and B (41st – 80th). Winners will be notified by email. 
• We will award an Amazon gift certificate (5,000JPY) to the top performers (Problem A: 1st – 10th, Problem B: 1st – 10th) who submitted a summary report of their algorithm. The summary guidelines are here and the summary examples are here.
• After the contest, all prize winners will be contacted by Hokkaido University and Hitachi Ltd. via email. Participants must reply to this email within the specified time limit to indicate their acceptance of the prize. Note that we will have to cancel the prize if a reply is not received by the designated date.

The final ranking of contestants after conducting the system test is announced in the table below. We thank all contestants for their contribution to as well as their participation in the contest.

The system test is finished. Prize winners will be notified by email. In order to deliver the prize, the winners are required to fill out the information and acceptance form and reply the email within the deadline. Please note that we have a very tight deadline for replying the email. Note that we will have to cancel the prize if a reply is not received by the designated date.

The awards ceremony will be held online during the lunch seminar session of the 85th National Convention of the Information Processing Society of Japan .
• Date and time: March 3rd, 2023 (Fri) 11:40 am – 12:30 pm
• Venue: The University of Electro-Communications and Online
• Program:(Tentative)
  • Introduction to the contest background 
  • Explanation of the contest tasks
  • Award ceremony
  • Invited lectures by the winners of problems A and B, explaining the main ideas and logic behind the winning algorithms. *
• *The contest organizers are planning to facilitate  a meeting to exchange ideas with the award winners.
• ** After the awards ceremony, we are planning to hold a discussion meeting between the contest winners  and Hokkaido University and Hitachi officials. Details will be sent to the invited individuals by email.

• The aims of Hitachi Hokudai Lab, in collaboration with stakeholders such as Hokkaido University, are to address social issues such as the depopulation and declining birthrate in Hokkaido and to achieve sustainable local communities. We are actively promoting community development driven by a community-based cycle of healthcare, industrial creation, and environmental improvement [1–4].


• Stability of the food supply is becoming more important for reasons of security in relation to the spread of infectious diseases, climate change, conflicts, and other factors affecting the global situation. As the number of farm households declines due to depopulation and aging, the domestic food self-sufficiency ratio is on the downward trend in Japan. The challenge is how to improve the efficiency of agriculture and create an environment that facilitates entry into farming so that we can provide a stable supply of food without relying on imports from overseas. The spread of remote work and side jobs is creating opportunities for a population movement from urban to rural  areas, and by creating an environment that makes it easier for people to enter the agricultural industry and thereby increase income-generating opportunities, more people may start migrating to rural  areas with rich natural environments, which will also lead to the revitalization of local industries. Another challenge relates to the increasing electrification of farm machinery in order to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases. In this context, it will be necessary to create a system that improves the efficiency of agriculture while keeping the initial investment as low as possible to combat the predicted rise in equipment costs.

• Under these circumstances, Hokkaido, with its abundance of natural resources and land, has a thriving agricultural industry that utilizes about one quarter of the nation's total cultivated acreage. Its agricultural output ranks first in Japan, contributing greatly to the domestic food supply. Efforts to improve agricultural efficiency by using drones to spray pesticides and implementing electric farm machines to support farm work will be significant in Hokkaido. At the same time, it is essential to reduce costs by establishing a system for the shared use of farm machinery (e.g., leasing and sharing), as the cost of introducing such machinery to vast amounts of farmland is high. In addition, as the distance between farmlands tends to be large, and the area of each farmland varies, it is necessary to improve the efficiency of farm machinery sharing by taking into account such spatio-temporal factors as work timing and moving time of farm machinery. To this end, we believe that the establishment of an agricultural asset-sharing platform that enables farmers to share agricultural equipment efficiently, including the scheduling of movement and work, and to flexibly exchange agricultural equipment and electricity without difficulty, will be crucial for improving the efficiency of farming and promoting it in the future.

• Against this background, Hitachi Hokkaido University Lab and Hokkaido University are developing an agricultural asset-sharing platform to contribute to the decarbonization and productivity improvement of the agricultural sector by sharing agricultural assets such as electricity and agricultural machinery, thus ensuring sustainability in rural areas. Hitachi Hokkaido University Lab has been developing local production systems for local consumption and self-supporting regional energy systems based on small-scale, self-supporting nanogrids that utilize renewable energy as the basic unit. These systems will provide electricity supplied from each nanogrid to local industries and improve the safety of the entire system by interconnecting each nanogrid with electric vehicles (EV). Furthermore, by utilizing EVs as an intra-regional commuter system to transport people and goods using surplus power, it should be possible to provide services that cannot be achieved by means of a single grid [3–5]. The core objective of this system is to take measures against the cost of maintaining the existing power distribution network, which is expected to increase in the future. We believe this system will be an important solution in the future, when electricity demand areas are expected to be dispersed in accordance with changes in population decline and depopulation in rural area. We are currently developing a multi-sector community simulator to estimate the specific investment required and the development effects by simulating the entire community that encompasses this system. In this context, evaluating the feasibility of an efficient agricultural asset-sharing platform, which is the main theme of this contest, is vital for helping to achieve Hitachi Hokkaido University Lab’s vision of community coexistence through a robust cycle of health, industry, and energy.

• Hitachi Hokkaido University Lab and Hokkaido University hold a marathon-type contest every year in which actual problems need to be solved by mathematical modeling. The intent is to encourage participants to address complicated social problems while having fun with algorithms and problem solving. 

• By dealing with actual problems rather than simple benchmarks, people all over the world can contribute to resolving the social issues that affect all of us, develop an understanding of the value of the services we want to provide, and help devise high-performance algorithms that lead to practical use through this contest. The algorithms devised in past contests have been studied for practical application along with the winners, and the research results have been presented at a variety of international conferences.