In response to our Climate Change Challenge (launched last year) Kolba Lab has received lots of different ideas via website and e-mail submission. The call for ideas was specifically looking for innovative and alternative solutions to design early warning systems using technology (web or mobile) and online tools. The five shortlisted ideas presented below will participate in a Social Innovation Camp on March 27-29. During the weekend the idea leaders will work together with registered designers, developers, IT specialists, and business consultants to build project models and prototypes.
A team of geeks has proposed an educational portal that functions as a set of ‘action guidelines’ for people before and after emergency situations. The solution includes both web, mobile and SMS tools to inform and warn the population. These platforms will include a risk-specific guideline for each type of emergency. The suggested solution will have:
1) a gamified test to assess user’s knowledge on any specific emergency and to educate them
2) a real-time guideline with practical recommendations on what to do (before and after emergency situations), through a mobile application and SMS.
Get Points and Survive
Educational games on disaster preparedness are becoming trendier worldwide. A team of designers and programmers has proposed a game where animated characters will educate players on what not to do in each specific disaster situation. The concept includes small gamified situations which help the user to chose the right actions and decisions, and also to earn points. When you complete a level, you increase your chance of surviving in a real-time situation. The game will primarily be targeted at teenagers.
This idea leader suggests creating a high density network of sensors using open source software and hardware, which will measure diverse indicators (air/soil humidity and temperature, air pressure, noise, light, etc) and collect data in publicly accessible online databases, as well as send data to pre-existing platforms like OpenStreetWeather, Weather Underground, Narodmon, etc. The suggested technical solution may be built on the platforms of Arduino, low power OpenWRT based microcomputers (Black Swift) and Rasberry PI where a constant electricity supply is available. In some cases data could be accompanied by professionally built weather stations. This idea can lead to a greener and cheaper system. The accumulated data will have both short and long term importance for analysis, predictions and modeling of risks in environment, agriculture, urban development, and tourism and economic sectors.
Those who sleep, let them wake up
A team from “Emergency Channel” NGO has suggested an educational game building on the characters from national myths and epics. “David of Sasoon”, the main cartoon hero of the proposed game, will lead the user through specific disaster situations. The game builds on real-life data and conveys messages that help players to understand what a natural disaster is and what actions can be taken to reduce the impact of disasters. The game could have both online and board-game versions.
GIS/RS based Early Warning Web System
Early warning systems allow people to identify disaster risks, analyze them, and predict and mitigate their consequences. The idea team has proposed using Geographic Information Systems and Remote Sensing methods to achieve this. The end product of this idea is envisaged as a number of digital thematic maps. The analyzed information will be communicated to the population via web platform. Synthesizing the information of thematic maps to a specific community, the platform would provide a risk assessment of this community against a disaster (for instance, if you put the drought risk map on the map of Aghavnadzor community, you would be able to assess the likelihood of a drought occurring, its consequences, and mitigation measures).