The Boys2| Home Planet at Your Fingertips
Awards & Nominations
The Boys2 has received the following awards and nominations. Way to go!
Home Planet at Your Fingertips
AllInOne
Summary
AllInOne is a mobile application, aimed at providing easy access to NASA data about the Earth to the general public. It allows phone users to find, observe, and download reliable data about our home planet. Moreover, it has customization and visualization opportunities to offer different groups of the population the needed NASA information. All In One has an understandable user interface and allows to request, visualize, and download data, and with the full-fledged implementation, it will become the irreplaceable instrument for people, interested in the NASA data.
How We Addressed This Challenge
Addressing the purposes of the challenge, we developed the prototype of mobile application, which will give an opportunity for usual customers to access and process the data taken directly from the official NASA resources.
From the suggested considerations on the challenge's web page, we have found the following ones the most important and demanding an instant high-quality solution:
- Data accessibility for people, who are not familiar with sophisticated data search systems or have limited resources. To adress this issue, the application will suggest easy-to-understand filters, by using which it will be easier for the customers to find the necessary information.
- Data comprehensibility for ordinary users, who primarily need not the full datasets but a clear representation of particular factors. Moreover, the datasets offered on the NASA and relatable websites are primarily available as enormous files, which not every device can access. To cope with this problem, we implemented the visualization tools, like diagrams, flowcharts, and maps, for better understanding by the customers of the complex events, recorded in datasets.
- Data relevance for different customers. The prototype has the authorization for the creation of the account in the systems, requiring authorization to get access to the data (GES DISC,
- etc.), and provides an opportunity to select a particular location, so it will provide the most relevant data.
In the future, we plan to:
- Improve customization tools (considering implementing more filtering options and create a ML model)
- Develop authorization and accessing data mechanisms
- Create the mechanism of data visualization with diagrams and graphs on the changing data
- Create comparison tools, which will generate diagrams and tables on the events and their properties in different regions/time periods
- Generally, develop the full-fledged beta-version, test and upload it to the app market.
Finally, the application will be available for users, who need to access NASA data and process it (monitor, visualize, or download).
How We Developed This Project
We chose this challenge since we consider as the most pressing of the suggested ones. Many groups of population (scientists, students, farmers) vitally need the reliable data about the Earth and the relatable topics for their work or study, and NASA’s databases can be considered as one of the most abundant and secure data sources. As school students, we especially need to cope with the problem of the lack of reliable sources, which are easy to access, every day. Our project will allow the general public to conveniently access and visualize the data without loss of time and need for specific knowledge.
As the best way to quickly visualize our ideas for the full-fledged application, we chose to create a Figma prototype of the mobile application. In the future, we plan to create a fully developed mobile application, which will be available on the App Store, based on this prototype.
As the main problems, we had issues with determining the mechanism of getting the data in general and the particular, which is not visualized as the map or the photo, from the NASA and relatable websites. As a solution, we decided that to get access to data in general, the customer will authorize through our application in the needed database systems, and the application will send queries, according to the filters set by customer, via Internet directly to those databases. To realize the use of non-visualized data, we implemented the feature of links to NASA data sources, by using which customer can access the data in browser.
How We Used Space Agency Data in This Project
For the prototype, we used the JAXA Global Rainfall Watch, IQAir Air Pollution, GES DISC data for the demonstration of the potential of the application. In addition, we plan to create comparison tools of events in different regions with streaming NASA WorldView data and implement the links to the State Geonode and other NASA-related sources with data with protected (requiring authorization) and open access.