Luminaries| Better Together
Awards & Nominations
Luminaries has received the following awards and nominations. Way to go!
Better Together
Ummeed (उम्मीद/Hope)
Summary
Our project aims to harness the power of humanity and technology to create awareness about humanitarian issues around the world. People can raise issues in their regions, following which the application processes the issue description to measure the authenticity. Similarity of query description with relevant RSS feeds, news sources and tweets analysis is measured and the corresponding links are stored for reference for that issue. Users have access to a Worldwide View with markers to indicate humanitarian crises. Clicking on the markers displays the list of resources which were previously recorded while performing validation.
How We Addressed This Challenge
We developed a web application which acts a portal for communication and education and connects people all over the world where it addresses various humanitarian issues occurring everyday. This is important because there is Inequality experienced by people all over the world and a general lack of awareness regarding urgent humanitarian issues. There is also an inability of socially aware people to contribute effectively. For this reason, our web application acts as the solution to address the problem. It helps bridge the gap that causes people to experience inequality and help address these issues. It will also help educate the users and get issues more outreach.
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1rTvKWK-jaWbaJFMqfxpmxVO-QOqjVv74Wanipy7Ag6Y/edit?usp=sharing
How We Developed This Project
The current events that have shaken up the world, have encouraged people to address the inequality that is faced by different sections of our society on a daily basis. The role of technology especially that of social media platforms is huge in spreading awareness and outreach amongst people. This positive effect of technology on our society is what inspired us to pick this challenge. We have made an interactive web application that helps a user to view, report ,educate and contribute in solving any humanitarian issue around the globe.
For our prototype, when a user visits our website they can:
- Report an issue which will be validated before being displayed as an issue on the 3D interactive globe.
- View the humanitarian issues on the globe and on clicking on them can see all the relevant resources related to it (photos, videos, article links, petitions, etc.).
Coding Languages used:
Python, HTML, CSS, JavaScript
Framework:
Django, SQLite 3 database
Software and Libraries used:
NASA WorldWind SDK, Jupyter Notebook, nltk, GeoPy, tweet-preprocessor, tweepy, htmldate
IDE:
Spyder, Visual Studio Code
Since the hackathon was virtual the integration of front and back end was a problem. We learned
a lot of new technologies for our project which made the entire experience more rewarding. We were selected as the finalists for second phase at our city level which allowed us to make some great connections with the other teams, making this whole thing an excellent experience.
How We Used Space Agency Data in This Project
We have used NASA WorldWind SDK to create the interactive earth visualization.
This SDK makes use of digital elevation model (DEM) data collected by NASA's Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM), National Elevation Dataset (NED) , Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER), etc. We are displaying humanitarian issues in need of attention as markers on the globe. The markers when clicked would display information regarding the crisis and verified ways of contributing to the cause.
Project Demo
Data & Resources
Data and Resources:
NASA WorldWind SDK: Dependent on NASA and USGS satellite imagery, aerial photography, topographic maps, Keyhole Markup Language (KML) and Collada files
Data Sources used to authenticate users claims:
RSS Feeds, News Organizations(Web Scraping), and Twitter API
News Sources/RSS Feeds for the prototype:
- Amnesty International
- UN Human Rights Feed
- NYU Human Rights Blog
- Chinese human Rights Defenders
- Google News
Technology:
Html, CSS, JavaScript
Django
SQLite
Python