Critical Infrastructure Protector

Critical Infrastructure Protector| From Curious Minds Come Helping Hands

Project Details

The Challenge | From Curious Minds Come Helping Hands

Your challenge is to design and build an innovative platform to integrate satellite data and information about vulnerable populations and environmental hazards in order to identify the most at-risk populations. Be creative and think outside the box. How will you identify those people that are often missed, but need aid the most?

Critical Infrastructure Protector is focused on providing essential protection – where and when it’s needed most.

Overview

https://criticalinfrastructureprotector.com

Critical Infrastructure Protector is focused on providing essential protection – where and when it’s needed most.

Using NASA datasets, along with information from other world-leading resources, we can pinpoint areas at risk from severe weather events such as hurricanes, tornadoes and severe storms.

At particular risk in weather emergencies are places where vital infrastructure could be damaged, or even destroyed. This includes places such as hospitals, schools and community hubs.

Code

The Engine behind Critical Infrastructure Protector combines a number of tools . . .

PHP
mySQL
JavaScript
CSS
HTML5
WordPress
PhotoShop

Along with datasets provided by

Principally, the code is written in PHP and relies on regression analysis to forecast the strenght and the trajectory of tornados. Human readable code is on GitHub for . . .

header.php
footer.php
engine.php
commonfns.php
dataset4.csv (extract)

Additionally, there is a confidential settings file which has details of the mySQL connection.

Data Demo

https://www.criticalinfrastructureprotector.com/wp/data-demo/

Solution

The Critical Infrastructure Protector (CIP) Engine is a database which utilises NASA data (with the addition of datasets from other expert sources), to work as a tool to provide information that is intended to alert governments, local authorities, healthcare providers and other key stakeholders responsible for infrastructure, so that they can implement safety plans and open places of shelter.

Additionally, it is intended to be used by members of the public – to alert them to danger, but also inform them where the nearest safe place to shelter is. This could be done via integration with social media, online maps, and working with phone companies to immediately alert those users in locations affected – telling them what the danger is and where they can go to be safe.

Future thinking

For the future, we envision that the CIP Engine could play an even bigger role in protecting critical infrastructure (as well as human life). It could be linked to structures – buildings such as hospitals – and at times of danger could trigger technology, such as large shutters and protective coverings, that would serve as a defence against the weather and protecting them from damage.

It’s even possible that innovative energy solutions could be developed to be part of these protective layers – which could ultimately harness the energy of severe weather and feed that energy back into existing energy grids.

This could include a hardware hack called the Anti-Wind which would harness the power of incoming weather systems, possibly using technology such as our own Octotruck, to invert the energy (in the way that noise-cancelling headphones do the same with noise) and channel an inverted signal back at the incoming weather system. Thus neutralising (or lessening) the impact of the oncoming storm.