SeeRise - See how the sea level rises

The Challenge

We were challenged to create a visual tool to illustrate the cumulative impacts of small changes associated with sea level rise over decades.

Our Proposal

We seeked to create an engaging application for people to learn about the causes, consequences and possible solutions to the issue of rising sea levels. To do so, we made use of visual tools such as interactive graphs and gamification concepts. We based the information on data made available by NASA on several websites and tools, referenced in the last section.

The App

The SeeRise app contains a main page and five other functions. On the main page, you can see a graph representing the sea level change rate over the years and information such as the current global mean sea level, global mean temperature and other data provided by NASA.

From the main page, you can access the sections and functions described below:

Quizz

This function presents the user a quizz about their habits and actions and how they relate to sea level rise. According to the result of the quizz, several suggestions are made to the user on how they can further help minimize the rate at which the oceans are rising (spoiler: demanding action from governments is a huge part of the solution).

Projection

The app uses a location and a year selected by the user to calculate if the area is a potential risk zone and how much of the place would be flooded according to the current rate of sea level rise, again made available by NASA's Sea Level Change Portal. To map and calculate the rise of the sea level on the chosen area (either the user's surroundings based on GPS location or anywhere in the world by typing in the coordinates), we used the computer graphics' concept of heightmaps to render a map showing which parts would be submerged in the year chosen by the user for the projection according to the current sea level change rate.

Causes and consequences

In this section the user can learn about what causes sea levels to rise and the consequences of it, along with pictures to illustrate the phenomenons, provided by NASA's Images of Change and Climate 365. We also utilized data on the causes of sea level rise made available by NASA's Infographic on Sea Level Rise.

Solutions

This sections informs the user about the possible solutions from NASA's Global Climate Change Portal and other sources to mitigate or to adapt to sea level rise and its several impacts presented in the Causes and Consequences section.

Settings

This functions allows the user to choose between languages (English or Portuguese), temperature scales (Celsius or Fahrenheit) and length units (meter or foot).

Links

All the code behind the SeeRise app is available on: https://github.com/Lellessa/NasaSpaceApps-2019

Download the app on our website: www.seerise.co

Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seeriseapp/

Subscribe to our YouTube channel: http://bit.ly/seeriseyt

References and Resources

About Heightmaps - https://repositorio.ufsc.br/bitstream/handle/123456789/184611/Monografia.pdf?sequence=-1&isAllowed=y

IPCC's Sea Level Change - https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WG1AR5_Chapter13_FINAL.pdf

Sea Level Rise Module Video from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and NOAA’s National Ocean Service - https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/sea-level-rise/welcome.html

Sea Level Rise Organization - https://sealevelrise.org

NASA's Climate 365 - https://www.facebook.com/pg/NASA/photos/?tab=album&album_id=10151367442216772

NASA's Global Climate Change Portal - https://climate.nasa.gov/

NASA's Images of Change - https://climate.nasa.gov/images-of-change

NASA's infographic on Sea Level Rise - https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/125/infographic-sea-level-rise/

NASA's Sea Level Change Portal - https://sealevel.nasa.gov/