ITD Contest, 2026

News

Evaluation Phase Starts

May. 25^th → Jun. 1^st, 2026

The evaluation phase (second phase) of the Individual Tree Delineation Contest 2026 starts. The link to the testing set of this phase is available on the page ‘Files’. In this phase, participants are required to submit the ITD results to the codabench platform and document the applied methods/models to get the valid score and rank. 

The description document should be sent to the itdcontest.mspace@gmail.com before the deadline of evaluation phase. The participants should describe their applied methods/models, including the descriptions and the figures for the pipeline of methods or the structure of model. If a method is not yet published, a description with sufficient details (e.g., in 1-2-page A4) is required to support the understanding of the organizer. If the method has been published, please provide the reference and to provide a short method description, e.g., in 1-page A4. All the descriptions will be used for the joint publication of the results. Additional clarifications may be required from the organizer during the evaluation process.

Please Note: the contest allows only one method/model for ITD, including: segmentation model and post-processing method. The method/model is required to be reproducible and automatic. Any manual operation is not allowed. the top-6 teams of phase 2 should submit a Docker to validate the results and code for the ranking validation. In cases that the Docker files of the top-6 teams are missing or the results cannot be reproduced, the next highest-ranking teams that submits all required materials will replace the teams fail to submit all necessary materials.

The following schedule includes:

• Deadline of Evaluation Phase: Jun.1^st00:00 (UTC+0), 1^st08:00 (UTC+8, Beijing), May 31^st 17:00 (UTC-7, New York);
• Winners Determination: before Jun. 27^th.
• Award Ceremony: to be announced.

Schedule Update

Jan. 20^th → Jun. 27^th, 2026

The schedule of the International Tree Delineation Contest 2026: Imagery-based Solution has been updated:

• Deadline of development phase: May 25^th00:00 (UTC+0), 25^th 08:00 (UTC+8, Beijing), 25^th 01:00 (UTC+1, Paris), 24^th 17:00 (UTC-7, New York);
• Deadline of evaluation phase: 1^st00:00 (UTC+0), 1^st 08:00 (UTC+8, Beijing), May 31^st 17:00 (UTC-7, New York);
• Winners Determination: Jun. 27^th(UTC+0), 27^th 08:00 (UTC+8, Beijing), 26^th 17:00 (UTC-7, New York);
• Award Ceremony: to be announced.

Individual Tree Delineation Contest 2026 Launched

Jan. 20^th → May. 26^th, 2026

Canopies play an essential role in biophysical functions of forest environments. At an individual tree level, the position, the size, and the geometry of a canopy are important structural characteristics that decides its functions. Hence, individual tree delineation (ITD) through high-resolution earth observation remote sensing (RS) image that provides the structural characteristics of the detected individual trees and their canopies has been becoming one of the most important topics in forest RS research during past two decades. The Individual Tree Delineation (ITD) Contest 2026 aims to clarify the state-of-the-art imagery-based ITD methods through a benchmarking study, whether machine-learning- or deep-learning-based methods.

The timeline of ITD Contest 2026 is :

• Contest Lauch: Jan. 20^th, 2026;

• Development Phase: Jan. 20^th 00:00 (UTC+0) → Apr. 20^th 00:00 (UTC+0); 20^th 8:00 (UTC+8, Beijing); 20^th 1:00 (UTC+1, Paris); 19^th 19:00 (UTC-7, New York);
• Evaluation Phase: Apr. 20^th (UTC+0) → Apr. 27^th 00:00 (UTC+0); 27^th 8:00 (UTC+8, Beijing); 27^th 1:00 (UTC+1, Paris); 26^th 19:00 (UTC-7, New York);
• Winners Determination: Apr. 27^th 00:00 (UTC+0) → May 23^th 00:00 (UTC+0); 23^th 8:00 (UTC+8, Beijing); 23^th 1:00 (UTC+1, Paris); 22^th 19:00 (UTC-7, New York);
• Winners Announcement: May 26^th, 2026
• Award Ceremony: to be announced.