Awards & Nominations
Delt◭ has received the following awards and nominations. Way to go!
Planet, With People
Delta - For the certain uncertainty
Summary
Sustainability's probably about balance. Yin-Yang, light-dark, black-white, the dynamics of life that leaves us with an awe that anything can happen, any moment. Natural disasters disrupt the balance of earth along with the life of every species on it. To manage the disruptions mankind employs algorithms and machines to forecast. However, 2 out of 3 times the algorithms and methods fail. Delta is a software tool that helps people in command "Take Action" when forecast failure catches everyone by surprise.
How We Addressed This Challenge
Introduction:
In meteorology it has always been an outstanding challenge to forecast the intensity and track of a cyclone/hurricane accurately. In fact, every statistical or computational model has limitations. Therefore every cyclone/hurricane forecast comes with a cone of uncertainty attached. The problem arises when natural disasters take us by surprise. Imagine for 30 days you are living in a city that's total dark in the night. No electricity at all. That would mean no TV channels, no mainstream news, no 3G/4G/wireline Internet Users. Total blackout. No public broadcast system except for shortwave and FM radio accessible to a few. How do you then connect with millions of disaster struck people who suddenly get disconnected from the electricity and the communication grid?
Delta connects emergency responders and disaster struck people when it's total dark for days and there's no accessible public broadcasting systems. The solution to the real life problems that people face after landfall are outside the domains of meteorology, hence our focus with Delta was to establish a communication reliable form of communication channel using 2G network.
Delta works by locating an end user using the method of cell tower triangulation, instead of GPS satellites. Because a poor network signal strength would drain the cellphone battery faster (especially when there's a limited scope to recharge the battery), delta app uses USSD to place a request and Cell information Brodcast messages to receive a message. The admin then gets an option in his dashboard to send a notification message (like: electricity services will not be available for 15 hours) straight to the subscribers of the cellular towers. And at the receiver end all of the Cell Broadcast messages sent via Cellular Tower is saved in the notification area of the app.
There's no guarantee that another cyclone of such a devastating scale will not originate again. The only guarantee we have is that we can never ever achieve 100% accuracy of predicting future events using computational models.
Every time a cyclone or a tsunami or a hurricane leaves millions of people disconnected from the rest of the world, this problem of connecting people with each other will appear again. We hope Delta helps disaster struck people reach out to each other and with the emergency responders while we face natural disasters together as a collective humanity.
How We Developed This Project
On 2nd May 2019 the city of Bhubaneswar in India was certain that a cyclone will pass few kilometers away from the outskirts of the city. People were prepared to see its partial effects. Such was the certainty that the forecasts tracking the cyclone, Fani, placed the city out of the cone of uncertainty. While whole of the administration and emergency responders prepared for evacuation and disaster response, public had no idea about the surprise that Fani had brought with itself. An hour or so after making landfall, Fani changed its path and tore apart the city leaving behind days of darkness and disconnect.
Understanding the context that for 30 days duration there'd be no electricity because of extensive damages caused to the power distribution infrastructure, we set out to find ways to help bridge the gap between the emergency responders (Govt /NGOs/Public Institutions) and those in need of care and help. Because every gadget is dependent on electricity, a power outage for a month simply disables the existing devices and communication infrastructure. Yes, fuel powered generators can be used but not every cyclone survivor can get access to one. Often times the only reliable resource almost everyone has access to is a mobile phone and a good old 2G network.
Using User Centered Design methodologies our focus was to understand the context and then define specific needs of specific users to meet. One theme that we identified is the disconnect between emergency responders and disaster survivors that last for days. Going a bit deeper we learnt that predictions are like superstitions and forecasts are more statistical and computational. And to our surprise we learnt why we can never achieve 100% accuracy of forecasting atmospheric events. That's when we realized that this specific problem will occur time and time again.
Based on our personal experiences of facing cyclones and experiencing difficult times, we brought in our life experiences into the application that we built. Since both of us are User Experience Designers, we decided to build an app prototype for 3 different types of users. 1) The Cyclone Survivors having access to a mobile phone and limited access to electricity (fuel gensets run by community caretakers) 2) the emergency responders on field who take up the task of restoring infrastructure. 3) The administrators and govt officials monitoring and managing the situation.
In our project we used Figma to collaborate and prototype our designs. Our primary challenge was to communicate with each other online effectively to make the best use of our 48 hours because we are at two opposite sides of our country making changes to the same canvas.
How We Used Space Agency Data in This Project
We used remote sensing data to learn about the different types of data available to us. Our solution displays the data from JAXA Realtime Rainfall data, NASA Blue Marble, Open Street maps in one screen.
The solution also makes use of Airtel Open signal map of 2G/3G Towers. This cellular tower map, when combined with remote sensing maps, gets an estimate of the total number of people experiencing rainfall and cyclonic winds in a geographical area, in real-time.
Admin screen.
Project Demo
Presentation Slides
https://1drv.ms/b/s!ArInwC6TwFmJhSRiJGIZzOjMQ44N?e=BDyqXH
Interactive Prototype
General Public Page:
https://www.figma.com/proto/tj5sE4fX7KvrNc276MXmC8/Web?node-id=905%3A839&scaling=scale-down
On field workers:
https://www.figma.com/proto/tj5sE4fX7KvrNc276MXmC8/Web?node-id=956%3A666&scaling=scale-down
Admin Page:
https://www.figma.com/proto/tj5sE4fX7KvrNc276MXmC8/Web?node-id=883%3A132&scaling=scale-down
Admin page(Will be used by management team):
Data & Resources
1) NASA Data Pathfinder: https://earthdata.nasa.gov/learn/pathfinders
2) Disaster data Path Finder: https://earthdata.nasa.gov/learn/pathfinders/disasters
3) Cyclone: https://earthdata.nasa.gov/learn/pathfinders/disasters/cyclones
4) International hurricane / Cyclone / Typhoon Tracking Map : https://www.cyclocane.com/
5) Nasa World Weather: https://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/worldweather
6) Cone of Uncertainty : https://www.facebook.com/scroll.in/photos/a-map-of-the-projected-path-of-cyclone-fanicyclone-fani-pronounced-foni-is-likel/2310001912416009/
7) Accuracy of plotting Cone Of Uncertainty: https://www.berkeybynmcl.com/understanding-the-tropical-cyclone-cone-of-uncertainty/
8) Predicting the intensity accurately remains an outstanding challenge of meteorology: http://wxguys.ssec.wisc.edu/2019/09/17/hurricane-cone/#:~:text=The%20cone%20of%20uncertainty%20represents,areas%20that%20will%20experience%20impacts.
9) Hurricane/Cyclone Wind Speed Category : https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/aboutsshws.php
10) Evaluation of COU in Tropical Cyclone Track Forest Over North Indian Ocean Issued by IMD :https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2225603218300432
11) Inherent predictability bound that future improvements in numerical models and in forecasting techniques will not be able to overcome : https://journals.ametsoc.org/mwr/article/139/11/3600/71427
12) The existence of a natural, inherent predictability bound for every atmospheric process is due to the nonperiodic property of the atmosphere (Lorenz 1963) : https://journals.ametsoc.org/jas/article/20/2/130/16956
13) Google Earth: https://earth.google.com/web/
14) JAXA Global Rainfall Watch: https://sharaku.eorc.jaxa.jp/GSMaP/index.htm
15) JAXA Realtime Rainfall Watch : https://sharaku.eorc.jaxa.jp/GSMaP_NOW/
16) Cyclone Fani : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone_Fani
17) Cyclone Fani - Impact -1 : https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-48121606
18) Cyclone Fani - Impact - 2 : https://www.skymetweather.com/content/weather-news-and-analysis/cyclone-fani-news-the-unique-journey-of-cyclone-fani-west-bengal-northeast-escaped-its-fury/
19) Cyclone Fani - Aftermath -1 : https://scroll.in/article/923660/cyclone-fani-puri-district-still-in-darkness-as-villagers-struggle-for-food-shelter
20) Cyclone Fani - Aftermath -2 : https://english.newsnationtv.com/india/news/a-month-after-cyclone-fani-164-lakh-families-still-in-darkness-in-odisha-226355.html
21) A reporter's first hand account: How I survived the cyclone. https://www.indiaaheadnews.com/nationwide/how-i-survived-cyclone-fani-327819
22) Use of Fuel based Electric gensets to restore Internet Services and Tower Availability :Telcos Emergency response: https://gadgets.ndtv.com/telecom/news/cyclone-fani-airtel-vodafone-idea-jio-bsnl-telecom-connectivity-free-sms-2032545
23) Airtel Open network - Open network of 2g / 3G/ 4G Towers. :https://www.airtel.in/opennetwork/