A new film, born from an IBM hackathon, shows how four world tragedies initiated innovative, mitigating technology.
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A new documentary, Code and Response, reminds viewers that 2018 has been one of the worst years in terms of natural disasters, incriminating governments, heavy aid organizations and overwhelming communities trying to rebuild. It reveals a new, surprising type of disaster relief: coders.
Held coders
The film, produced by IBM and directed by Austin Peck, focuses on the increasing incidents of natural disaster destruction, and a framework of programmers who have dedicated their attention and technical talent to facilitate and accelerate respondents’ responses to natural disasters . The social activist developers serve as a front line defense against some of the greatest dangers for society.
A ruthless villain
The impact of climate change has not only brought more natural disasters into the world, it has also increased the frequency.
So far, water has not been turned into blood, no locusts or frogs, or boils, or darkness. Yet the world is experiencing natural disasters with biblical plague: earthquakes, floods, tsunamis and fires, and perhaps worse, the tragedy that each entails.
SEE: How to build a successful career for developers (free PDF) (TechRepublic)
“I have been doing this for about 13 years, disaster relief,” said Trevor Riggen of the Red Cross in the film.
“We have always based our responses on the seasons – you had the fire season, you had hurricane season, tornado season, blizzard season and you would be able to pace yourself, how we do our work, after each season. The seasons are over. It’s just constant. ”
“So we are rolling from one huge disaster to another,” Riggen added. “We used to see a five-year gap between major events. Now we see it on an annual basis. We see three to five. We now see three to five truly complex events, such as Hurricane Harvey, such as Maria in Puerto Rico, such as the forest fires here . We are resilient, but we need some better tools to get there. ”
Personal experience + crazy code skills
Daniel Krook, chief technology officer, IBM Code and Response, said the developers “created applications in response to a personal experience of a natural disaster. After experiencing an event, developers help create powerful solutions by literally putting themselves in the shoes of to place the intended end user of their technology. ”
The stars
The Wildfire report from Kenji Kato takes publicly available geographic data from NASA, NOAA and the Forest Service and applies it to fly-through videos of affected areas that make the path and speed of the fire easy to understand.
Photo: code and response
The developer activists who have experienced the incidents that have boosted their code development: Subalekha Udayasanka (earthquake in Mexico City), Pedro Cruz (hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico), the WOTA team of programmers and engineers (Tsunami 2011 in Japan), and Kenji Tato (fire from the state of Washington in 2014). Both have unique, creative and innovative technology to reduce different types of disasters around the world, but they all have a tragic effect on the population.
Open source assistance
Massive destructive natural disasters are increasing all over the world, and aid, aid and recovery must be speeded up. The codes that these developers have made do more and more.
Code and Response is not only a documentary that emphasizes information about the development of code, but also an open source movement. The solutions based on open source technology are made to save lives, help responders and facilitate recovery efforts.
After the Tsunami in Japan in 2011, the WOTA team with different backgrounds, such as medicine, architecture, software integration, aviation and data analysis, created a new water infrastructure.
Photo: code and response
From hackathon to applicable innovation
George Hammer, chief content officer, IBM and executive producer of the film, said that IBM was one of the founders of the
Call for code 2018
global hackathon challenge and initially wanted to document the story of the competition. “While we were researching, we were forced by the interesting characters we met and decided to make the coders the center of the film instead.”
Kenji Kato, a developer / activist profiled in the film, said: “When I was invited to the Wildfire-specific Call for Code hackathon in Fremont, California, in 2018, I knew I had to go and participate in the event as it was a perfect place to test the idea that was formulated in my head. ”
He said he learned about IBM technologies such as IBM Watson APIs, the ability to deliver iOS CoreML models from IBM Cloud to iOS apps, and IBM’s purchase of The Weather Company during the event.
“I took those newly learned facts and technologies, and blended them with the skills I had built in creating mobile apps, and blended it with the ideas I had verified from the wildfire fly-through videos. The result was the first iteration of the Wildfire.Report app. ”
The Kato app combines’ the idea of building an automated video briefing on IBM Cloud that synthesizes multiple GIS data sets, including Weather Company data, and delivers information and video in a mobile app. This app gives users access to the videos, interactive base maps, fire information and other data, and share this data with others around them, even if they don’t have an internet connection at that time. ”
After participating in the movie and IBM’s Code & Response implementation initiative, Pedro Cruz was appointed by IBM as a proponent of development focused on helping others accelerate advanced, open technologies.
Photo: code and response
Unlikely humanitarian and heroes
Hammer from IBM said: “Our goal was to introduce audiences to the unlikely humanitarians, developers, who bring new ideas and solutions to disaster relief organizations. We want audiences to run away hopefully and be inspired to do something to help. ”
But he emphasized: “We didn’t want this to come across as an advertisement. We wanted to be in places where the great content lives, streaming platforms.”
“In the beginning,” Hammer explained, “we set off to document a hero’s journey as he tried, failed, and repeated his solution to help first responders for the next hurricane season.
“We used the hackathon as a source for casting and we found countless characters who had personal reasons to fight against nature and to support first responders,” he added. “So we turned around to create a documentary that gave us time to get to know characters from all over the world. Only they make an impression. United and collaborating using open source technologies, we were convinced that they could accelerate innovation even faster. ”
variety
According to Krook, what struck producers was “diversity within teams led to the most effective applications.”
“When creating a solution, personal experience with the challenges of a particular disaster is an important advantage, but also a wide range of other skills, such as those who can create great user interfaces, implement complex algorithms and a large amount of data effectively,” he said.
The film was shot between September and November 2018 and the filmmakers did not expect it to be the worst year recorded for natural disasters, whatever it was. From a list of potential stories to emphasize, they limited the choices based on the assessment of the technical potential that each developer created. They also considered news coverage because “While we were in production, disasters were taking place everywhere,” Hammer said.
Agreements and not
Regarding inter-community technology, Krook said: ” . we saw common patterns for solutions. For example, the use of blockchain to track donor-recipient contributions, with each team adding their own unique twist to the concept.”
“We have also seen the growth of chatbots that go beyond simple conversation interactions to deeper integrations of machine learning that help them improve as they are used,” Krook said.
“Overall,” he added, “we were also happy to see teams taking a Design Thinking approach in developing their applications, meaning they understood the needs of their intended end users in their community, instead of just technology to a problem. ”
DroneAid
Another profiled developer, Pedro Cruz, said his tech,
DroneAid
, was born on the Call for Code 2018 Puerto Rico Hackathon. It was based on his experience during the aftermath of Hurricane Maria.
“Because there was no cell signal, residents in different communities tried to signal helicopters and planes by drawing” SOS “on the roofs of houses or on the roads,” Cruz said. “I was frustrated to see so many forgotten people signaling for help promised by the government and NGOs and never received anything.”
“So I wondered if it was possible for drones to recognize these ‘SOS’ messages using AI and plot the location of people on a map so that first responders quickly know where the most help was needed after a disaster.”
The Wildfire app from Kato also has a card that can be used both online and offline for first responders.
“I thought that if there was a way to standardize SOS with a symbol, it could be easier to read and work in different languages, and that’s how DroneAid Symbol Language was born,” Cruz said.
“After interviews with community leaders and social workers, I heard that there were civilians in a small town in Humacao, PR, who used flags to signal when they needed water. Based on this real-world case, I created a set of six symbols that can be placed on mats, flags or balloons.I was lucky to have access to a printing shop at the Hackathon location, so I printed out the first DroneAid Mat with the testing symbols, my drone flew in the parking lot, and it worked. In the end, I received the first prize in the Puerto Rico hackathon and I am now developing DroneAid as an open-source project within IBM’s Code and Response initiative. ”
Always room for improvement
Krook, who said that “nobody eliminates risk today and that there is always room for improvement,” noted: “The impact of natural disasters is growing, both in terms of sheer power and in costs for people and property. Even if it isn’t would grow, these disasters would always be a threat that needs to be limited so that there will always be a need for new solutions to reduce their impact. ”
“My hope for the solutions is that they will be adopted and adapted globally through the open source community,” he added. “What has been developed for hurricanes in Puerto Rico, for example, can also be a good solution for typhoons in Africa and India, as well as cyclones in the Philippines and Oceania. The same applies to natural fire technology that affects every continent.”
New movement
Code and Response has sparked a new movement, IBM’s new $ 25 million, four-year implementation initiative to build, strengthen, test and implement solutions, including solutions for coding challenges such as Call for Code.
It becomes a starting point for open source programs such as Call for Code and “Clinton Global Initiative University” and supports the entire process of creating solutions for the most needy. Call for Code is looking for solutions to this year’s challenge and coders can go to the Challenge Experience 2019 to participate.
Call for Code unites developers and data scientists around the world to create sustainable, scalable and live-saving open source technologies through the power of Cloud, AI, blockchain and IoT technology.
Clinton Global Initiative University works with IBM and is committed to inspiring university students to use modern, emerging and open-source technologies to develop disaster relief and resilience challenges.
“Technological skills are becoming increasingly valuable,” said Krook, “even for students who are not going to become professional software developers. For computer science students, putting the end user first and empathizing with how they hope to use technology to solve their problems. – especially those who pose a threat to their health and well-being – will help them understand how to build high-quality and well-designed software. “
Kato had this to offer other ambitious social activists: “Being open to new ideas and concepts, and stepping outside of your comfort zone to learn new technologies, will serve you better than building a technical solution based solely on what you know.”
Cruz offered: “Create a solution based on a real problem and validate it with the people who would actually use it. Often as developers we have an idea for an app and we start coding away before we evaluate the value proposition and user We build in the end, something that we don’t want to use. By interviewing users first, you have a better chance of making something practical that they need, rather than wanting it to be fun. ”
Honored and awarded
Code and Response won the best documentary at the New York International Film Festival, Gold Award / best position at the Southeast Regional Film Festival, the Founders Award at the North Beach American Film Festival, and was an official selection of the Golden Door International Film Festival , the New Haven International Film Festival, as well as the Napa Valley Film Festival.
Code and Respond is available to rent or purchase on Apple TV, Vimeo and Amazon Prime (the latter is included with Prime). All proceeds are donated to first responders.
Click here to contribute to the open source project.
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The documentary “Code & Response” examines the idea of developers as social activists, who serve as a front line defense against some of the greatest dangers of society.
Photo: code and response
