Background

We built this project because we were interested in challenges with a large impact - there are tens of thousands of people affected and even killed in natural disasters every year across the world, and we thought it would be extremely fulfilling and worthwhile to address an issue with such a massive potential impact.

What It Does

Disaster I/O can be summarized as 'the Waze for natural disasters.' Our program implements NASA's Earth Observatory Natural Event Tracker API to populate a web-based map application with markers of natural disaster events. However - what makes Disaster I/O exciting is the fact that users can report their own data as well! If a civilian is in distress, they can add themselves as a marker to alert rescuers to their exact location via geolocation. Those affected by the disaster can also work together by reporting fires, flooded roads, demolished buildings, and so on by uploading images to our application (which are spam-filtered by Google's Cloud Vision AI for image recognition). After an image is validated, data points are added to the map for all users to see - and Disaster I/O will route the safest ways for civilians to evacuate, and the safest and most efficient routes for law enforcement and rescue teams.

NASA Data

As mentioned above, we used NASA's EONET API. We used this data because it was a perfect fit for the mapping API we wanted to implement - the Mapbox API. It also conveniently provided the complete range of data we needed for our project!

Future Plans

Potential future implementations are the most exciting part of this challenge! We would like to develop this program to provide our own API, so that governments or regional emergency services could implement our data into their own applications and programs. We would also love to help those in the poor countries without access to the internet by building a text messaging service which allows civilians to share images to populate the map. This would allow police dispatchers, for example, to access information from those in the thick of the crisis, even if the users themselves can't get online. We'd also use the text messaging service to allow law enforcement and governments to blast critical information to those in disaster areas - perhaps providing our safe escape routes, or asking users to text photos of damaged infrastructure.

We were lucky enough to make some exciting contacts through Space Apps mentors and volunteers, and intend to call organizations that could potentially use an API we created to see how we could best solve their pain points and meet their needs.

Built With?

We built our program with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, the jQuery-UI library, the Mapbox API, and the NASA EONET API. We would love to eventually implement a back-end to offer our own API for use, which we would most likely do using Java.

Github Repository

You can click here to see our GitHub repo!

Tags

#html, #css, #javascript, #jquery, #eonet, #mapping, #naturaldisasters, #disaster, #environmental, #vulnerable, #api, #relief, #humanitarian, #io, #crowdsource, #end-user, #maps

Questions and Answers

Q - What is Disaster I/O, in a nutshell?
A - Disaster I/O is sort of like 'Waze for emergencies'. NASA's EONET API populates the map with natural disasters in real-time, and users (civilians affected by the disaster) can upload additional information (such as flooded roads, spreading fires, etc). These photos are verified using Google Cloud Vision, and, if they meet their description (a photo of a fire to report a fire, etc), the information populates the map. When a user makes a distress call, they can be seen on the map by all users. Like Waze, Disaster I/O uses this information to provide the best routing options (for civilians trying to escape, or rescuers going in to save citizens in distress).

Q - How is data aggregated from NASA and users?

A - Data is aggregated because both are shown on the map for all to see, and influence routing options.

Q - You mentioned the ability to text if internet is unavailable - what if ALL network infrastructure is down?
A - We know that, in Australia, as an example, civilians can access the satellite network (for emergency calls ONLY) if they find themselves so deep in the Outback, traditional networks are completely unavailable. While we'd need more information, we would seek to eventually be able to take distress calls, user reports, and send out information through satellite networks (in tandem with the pertinent government's resources and support).

Q - What is the ultimate goal of Disaster I/O, once development is complete?

A - Ultimately, we would love Disaster I/O to be localized by different governments and law enforcement agencies, and citizens made widely aware of it. Citizens can use it in natural disaster scenarios, and our back-end API can be integrated with 911 operators, police dispatchers, hospitals, etc to put them IN the disaster zone. This would give response teams an 'on-the-ground' understanding of the disaster area, and allow faster response times since they would know the exact location of more people (without having to work through a massive 911 queue)!

Q - What are your next steps?

A - We already have a prototype for the texting feature, but our next step is to get into contact with relevant government agencies to see which problems we can solve specifically. What doesn't work about calling 911? What sort of logistical problems do first-responders face? How can we help coordinate large disaster relief teams (like the military, in some cases) by supplying as much relevant data as possible, all in a simple program? With the answers to these questions, we intend to develop Disaster I/O into a revolutionary product that achieves our mission statement - saves lives, faster!