New Channel
I joined the recent Airbus-SSTA HADR challenge where my team and I were suppose to develop an app to increase efficiency and effectiveness of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief using satellite technology as the application of satellite technology and its increasing role in providing quick, accurate and effective response to frequent and complex disaster situations is evident. Across the world, countries have recognized the need of utilizing remote sensing satellite technologies as a critical tool in real-time disaster management. . We thus decide to create Apleviate that is designed for both aid workers and victims as we believe it will improve communication and speed up the disaster relief process. Apleviate has several features that help the user to communicate, gather information and analyze the disaster area situation.
For this project, I worked mainly with the maps part. Everything that is seen on the map is done by me. During the process, I made sure that it would be easier for users to understand the map which has several features such as route generation and manipulation, marker clustering, accepting of victim requests, road block addition and verification with street view. I organized it such that it would aid user experience especially since it should be easy to use in the event of an emergency. After taking into consideration all of these, I managed to figure out an optimal way to make the map user friendly and increase user experience. Furthermore, I helped out with the brainstorming on what app we should actually make or is suitable for this challenge and the combining of our codes.
Features
Disasters of every kind are occurring more frequently and becoming more complex. With this comes an increase in the quantity of existing problems. One such problem is poor communication which is still one of the most prevalent problems during a disaster relief. While providing assistance, communication is vital as it helps coordinate work, decision making and makes sure that everyone is on the same page by providing information. Poor communication will lead to unnecessary ineffectiveness whereby humanitarian needs are not provided quickly, accurately and effectively.
Our group plans to target the aspect of communication as we believe that it is of utmost importance. Furthermore, we also believe that the communication should not only be between the aid workers, which most applications focus on, but also include the victims as well. This will result in the victims being able to help share information and speed up the disaster relief process. We believe that this would be helpful as the victims would be more familiar with the situation of the disaster, providing more accurate information, helping aid workers understand the overview of the geographical extent of the disaster. With better communication, we are also able to gather information to analyze the situation of disaster-affected areas and victims, which allows us to make a more suitable and swift decision for the response such as setting up shelter or distribution center at the best locations.
Features for The Aid Workers and The Victims
Apleviate has chat-rooms much like that of the normal communication platforms such as Whatsapp and Telegram. This chat-room is meant for both the aid worker and the victims such that the victims can also play a part in the disaster relief process. It allows both the aid workers and victims to create their own circles or group-chats to communicate and coordinate with one another.
Figure 5: Sample chat-room for the aid workers and victims.
Figure 4: Chat-room for the aid workers and victims.
Apleviate has a drop down menu to help the aid workers and victimes navigate through the app.
Apleviate is able to automatically generate the shortest route that leads the victim to a shelter or an aid worker to the last logged location of the victim. Furthermore, the route can also be altered in the event where the road conditions are not good just by dragging the route.
Figure 2: Before dragging the route.
Figure 3: After dragging the route.
Figure 1: Drop-down menu of the app.
Apleviate also has a feature that allows victims and aid workers to update or share their status and location. Victims can indicate their status by clicking the unique icons located at the top right hand corner of the app. Icons available are the "OK" icon, "Need Help" icon and the "No Status" icon. An alert will be sent when the "Need Help" icon is clicked.
Other than being able to see the location, the battery status is also shown. This indicates whether the person remains contactable or not. When the battery hits zero, Apleviate will thus show the last location of that person such that help can be sent to that location.
Figure 6: UI for the person's location as well as battery level.
Additional Features for The Aid Workers
Additional Features for The Aid Workers
Apleviate implements the marker cluster functions for victims seeking help. The color of the cluster changes depending on the number of victims waiting and have been accepted. This would make the map neater and less messy. Furthermore, the aid workers can click on the separate clusters or individual victim markers to see the information of them. Then, the aid workers can decide whether or not they wish to accept the victims that are still waiting. This would help prevent clashes between aid worker groups.
Apleviate implements the marker cluster functions for victims seeking help. The color of the cluster changes depending on the number of victims waiting and have been accepted. This would make the map neater and less messy. Furthermore, the aid workers can click on the separate clusters or individual victim markers to see the information of them. Then, the aid workers can decide whether or not they wish to accept the victims that are still waiting. This would help prevent clashes between aid worker groups.
Figure 7: Satellite map that shows information of the victims such as status and location, road condition reports and position of shelters.
Figure 7: Satellite map that shows information of the victims such as status and location, road condition reports and position of shelters.
Apleviate allows aid workers to send personalized help requests to other aid workers which immediately notifies them. They can also view the ongoing requests.
Figure 9: UI of aid request.
Apleviate allows aid workers to send personalized help requests to other aid workers which immediately notifies them. They can also view the ongoing requests.
Figure 9: UI of aid request.
Additional Features for The Victims
Additional Features for The Victims
Apleviate allows the victims to report road blocks due to the disaster since they are more familiar with the roads as they are in the disaster areas.
Figure 11: Satellite map showing a confirmation of adding a road block marker and a route from the victim's current location to one of the shelters indicated in red.
Apleviate allows the victims to report road blocks due to the disaster since they are more familiar with the roads as they are in the disaster areas.
Figure 11: Satellite map showing a confirmation of adding a road block marker and a route from the victim's current location to one of the shelters indicated in red.
By clicking on the "road block" icon, the aid workers can also view the street view of the place, this is to check the condition of the road and to verify the report, making use of satellite technology.
By clicking on the "road block" icon, the aid workers can also view the street view of the place, this is to check the condition of the road and to verify the report, making use of satellite technology.
Figure 8: Street view of the reported road condition.
Figure 8: Street view of the reported road condition.
The requests will be reflected on another page and the aid workers can slide and choose whether they wish to accept the request or not. This would help with coordination in the sense where aid workers will not do the same task, preventing clashes. It is also ranked in chronological order such that the earlier request will be seen first.
Figure 10: UI of ongoing requests.
Figure 10: UI of ongoing requests.
Firebase
Firebase
All the information such as the victim's location, the road block locations as well as the shelter locations are all stored in Firebase to ensure a real-time map. This ensures that the satellite map would be constantly updating victims status and the addition of new road blocks. This ensures that the information are all up to date, making analyzing and decision making faster. Thus, helping to make the disaster relief process swift and efficient.
Other Potential Uses and Improvements
Other Potential Uses
Apleviate not only provides function for disaster relief activities but it also doubles as an application that can be used to prevent terrorist attacks. One such feature is that users can report and help identify any road blockages as the original function and this can double as a platform for users to report any suspicious activities happening in the area. Furthermore, it is also a means to help people check and track whether their friends and family are safe, making it suitable for everyday use.
Improvements
-
Currently our application does not provide a highly accurate optimized route due to the lack of a proper route calculation algorithm. In some sense, the user still has to drag the routes to avoid road blocks, however, we wish to generate a route that already takes that into account. We think that this is an important feature to work on as reducing the amount of time required to get to the disaster-struck area is of utmost importance since lives are at stake.
-
We did not implement anything regarding the adding of shelters. Hopefully, in our later versions, we are able to have an algorithm that suggests potential shelter places dependent on the disaster areas whereby the shelters would be nearer those that are more serious.
-
Our application also requires connection to the internet which might become a problem if the disaster destroys existing communication infrastructures. One possible solution is to program the application in a way that it can be used even in offline situations.
-
We also think that the availability of pre-disaster warnings is useful as it allows the users to prepare for the disasters beforehand and hence also reduce the risks. This can be done by getting live updates from the geological centers in the countries which constantly provides information regarding possible disasters in the country. One such example is Taiwan, whereby they provide constant information regarding incoming typhoons which allows the citizens to prepare for it.
FYI: This was my first ever hackathon and we are waiting for the results to be out. Hopefully, our hard work will not go to waste! (:
Github Link:
APK File:
We managed to clinch second place and obtained a Certificate of Distinction.