National Strategy for Mine Action: 5 key changes that will accelerate demining

Demining in July: hundreds of cleared hectares and a hackathon for training AI. The monthly summary of humanitarian demining was presented by the Ministry of Economy, Environment and Agriculture of Ukraine.

"July was productive for humanitarian demining both in the field and in the innovation domain. Operators cleared hundreds of hectares of land, while simultaneously a hackathon was held in Kyiv to create a training dataset for artificial intelligence in mine detection," said Ihor Bezkaravainyi, Deputy Minister of Economy, Environment and Agriculture of Ukraine.

During the month, mine action operators worked in the most contaminated regions, clearing agricultural land, infrastructure, and residential areas from explosive ordnance. The pace of clearance continues to increase thanks to the growing number of operators and the expansion of the heavy machinery fleet.

"The hackathon brought together more than 50 students from technical universities who labelled aerial images for training AI algorithms. These young people are making a direct contribution to making demining faster and safer," noted the Deputy Minister.

The AI Labeling Sprint hackathon was the first of its kind in Ukraine and the region. Its results — a labelled dataset — will be used by developers of artificial intelligence systems for mine detection.

July also saw progress in the agricultural land demining compensation programme, with new auctions held and contracts signed. International partners continued to provide support through equipment transfers, specialist training, and funding.