GeoLens| Data Discovery for Earth Science

Awards & Nominations

GeoLens has received the following awards and nominations. Way to go!

Global Nominee

Data Discovery for Earth Science

Websites like the NASA Earth Observatory showcase the many uses of satellite data to highlight interesting natural events. International partner instruments on NASA satellites such as Japan’s ASTER instrument and Canada’s MOPITT instrument, both onboard the Terra satellite, are also included as part of the Observatory. This challenge will ask you to devise a tool or technique to guide users to relevant datasets to study specific events.

GeoLens

Summary

Since people experience or read about unlimited natural events throughout their life, it will be time-consuming for researchers, scientists, or even students to search for everything about an event they want to study. Henceforth, we created an application to solve that problem by facilitating data accessibility and recommending other relevant data for guiding and helping them to know more about these events and get what they're searching for readily and sequentially.Not only that but also this application will help people to live the moment by updating them with every upcoming event.

How We Addressed This Challenge

This application has some features different from other sites or apps, starting with:



  • The map that represents all of the natural events which are geographically determined by their latitude and longitude.
  • Location tracker to show the user the events according to his location; for example: If you're in Egypt, the app will notify you more about interesting events in Egypt and so on.
  • It also has multi-language platform, consequently it will be available more widely to users from different cultures.
  • It also depends on using online satellite images and High defined photos from NASA's websites and other trustworthy websites.
  • Support the ability to directly contact the developer of the app using their interface.
  • Save events that have interested the user which he/she can access by "more" tab in the app in the "favorites"
  • Gives you links and different resources after the summary of each event so that you can further your research
  • Sorts out events chronologically from the most recent to the oldest, and also sorts events according to their type (fires, floods, penguins, aurora...etc.). This makes it easier for the user to surf the events.
  • The GeoLens App Now Available In Play Store With Name "GeoLens".
  • The Play Store Link & APK File Available In GitHub Repositories In CODE Field.
  • Please Make Sure To READ The README File In GitHub Repositories.
How We Developed This Project

We were STEM students and have studied Earth Science as an Honors course and Astronomy and remote sensing as additional courses. We have learned so much about faults, rocks, natural forces, transmitting and receiving, data analysis, natural disasters and more. Our school is a project-based school which means we mostly depend on ourselves to search for data, understand topics, summarize, present what we learned in front of professional tutors, and then combine what we learned from the different subjects to create a solution for the challenges that face Egypt. One of the hardest subjects to collect data on was Earth science. It was really hard to obtain good results and it was even harder to stay concentrated and enthusiastic about the topics. For those reasons, we wanted to create an easier tool for the students like us out there or Earth Science enthusiasts to be able to search, collect and understand data of events they are interested in and keep them engaged in the topic.

To develop this project we first needed to surf the websites of NASA and other trustworthy websites for data on the natural events. After that we sketched out a draft of how we wanted to divide the data and how to sort it. Then we created a database and uploaded it on one of the domains. After that we started filling in some data from the resources' websites. Then we created a draft design for the app, coded it (which was a hectic time-consuming work), created designs for the splashscreen, loading Gif, event type icons and so on, and finally tested it out.

For the design, which included the icons of the event types, color palette, logo, loading Gif, project presentation, and video editing we used the following apps:



  • Logo, color palette, icons of event types: Krita, Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe Color.
  • Loading Gif: PowerPoint and InVision Studio
  • Project Presentation: Focusky app and ArtBoard Studio website
  • Video Editing: Filmora, and desktop video recording

As for the Problems that we met in designing:



  • The color palette was hard to choose, we wanted something classy, modern, simple and comfortable for the eye. After trial and error on Adobe color, and trying the colors out on the logo, we decided to go for a soft modern look that is included in the light blues and pinks
  • The loading Gif was hard to make. We searched a lot to understand how to make an effecting nice looking Gif and how to make it animated.
  • InVision studio had a little hard interface to deal with, it is on which we tested out how the Gif will look like in the Splashscreen and the loading time.
  • Video editing was hard, because the time limit of 30 seconds was too little to present what is inside the project. After making about 6 draft videos, we finally made a suitable video to present our project.

For Code Development :



  • we Developed mobile application using Flutter which allows us to export native application for various mobile operating system such as Android & IOS . In addition to that, Flutter allows us to stablish web and desktop application from a Single CODEBASE.
  • we Applied Database using SQL which allows us to easily access and manipulate databases. Besides that, SQL allows us to stablish new tables and create stored procedures with various permissions options and features.
  • Not only that but we also use MVC which stands for Model, View, and Controller. Therefore the Application is separated into three components: Model, View, and Controller. So briefly we have established Administration Panel using MVC.
  • Additionally Mobile Application is connected to API which Stands for application programming interface Which link Database with mobile Application .Therefore , That makes the flutter App link synchronously with Database.
How We Used Space Agency Data in This Project

We linked the project which consists of a web app; used primarily by administrators to modify and update the database, and mobile app for clients and users to view the data.

The web app uses the Model View Controller pattern that separates the data models from the UI code. 

We exploited the resources of NASA's website to construct our database by using their images and paraphrasing the data written in there to write a brief description of every event we mentioned in our application. Beside some other resources from sites which we used other than NASA whether to get longitude and latitude of some regions of the natural disasters or to get more information about some events, we came up with a comprehensive or enough information for these events. 

Project Demo
Project Code
Data & Resources
Tags
#GeoLens #Data Discovery #Flutter #MVC #API #Code #UI #Design #STEM
Judging
This project was submitted for consideration during the Space Apps Judging process.