Developers around the world are uniting for a cause that could save lives — here's how IBM is helping

By Bob Lord, Chief Digital Officer, IBM

With all of the wildfires that have raged through California, including the largest and deadliest in the state's recorded history, it would be easy to lose faith in our ability to limit the damage caused by natural disasters. I reflected on this as teams gathered in Puerto Rico in August, almost one year since Hurricane Maria tore through the islands and as the inhabitants braced themselves for the 2018 hurricane season. Led by IBM's Dr. Angel Diaz, a native of the region, there was a palpable sense of optimism and excitement in the room, given stark relief by the devastation still visible outside. For two days, NGOs, relief organizations, and members of the local startup and developer communities came together to explore ways in which technology could help better prepare and protect their communities for the future.

A compelling idea named DroneAid, from local developer Pedro Cruz, used drone and visual recognition technologies to help first responders identify the areas and families in greatest need. You can catch a glimpse of DroneAid and hear from its creator in this video:

National news outlets also took notice and shed some light on this incredible event:

This was one of more than 325 events held in over 50 cities around the world — part of the inaugural Call for Code, a new global initiative — created by David Clark Cause and Founding Partner IBM. The initiative supports Charitable Partners United Nations Human Rights and the American Red Cross, and The Linux Foundation is also helping power the cause. Call for Code is designed to rally the technology industry, academia, and NGOs in an effort to help reduce the impact of natural disasters, such as fires, floods, volcanoes, hurricanes, and tsunamis on society. As Founding Partner, IBM is investing $30 million over the next five years, as well as technology and resources with the goal of developing technology solutions that significantly improve disaster preparedness, provide relief from devastation caused by natural disasters, and benefit Call for Code's Charitable Partners.

Even as we made the announcement at VivaTech in Paris in May, Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano was destroying hundreds of homes and soon afterward Guatemala’s ‘Volcano of Fire’ left hundreds dead and missing. Against this backdrop, we placed our belief in the promise of technology and the willingness of developers around the world to invest their skills and drive positive and long-lasting change in society.

We were not disappointed.

In 2018, over 100,000 developers from 156 nations around the world participated, creating more than 2,500 applications. More than 70 organizations are now signed up as program sponsors, supporters, or affiliates, and many IBM clients have engaged their in-house developer teams to build solutions designed to help improve the current state of disaster preparedness. We've benefitted from the support of 40 generous celebrity supporters in addition to content partners and a panel of eminent judges — former President Bill Clinton; Jim Zemlin, Executive Director, The Linux Foundation; Kate Gilmore, United Nations Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights; Dr. Irwin Redlener, Director of National Center for Disaster Preparedness at the Earth Institute of Columbia University; Deborah Dugan, Chief Executive Officer, (RED); and Grace Kim, Design and Research Lead at Twitter — who volunteered to help select the winning technologies.

On October 29, the 2018 Call for Code winners were announced during a Global Prize Celebration at the Regency Ballroom in San Francisco, California. The winner of the USD $200,000 grand prize, Project OWL, is an IoT and software solution that keeps first responders and victims connected in a natural disaster. Project OWL, which stands for Organization, Whereabouts, and Logistics, is a two-part hardware/software solution that provides an offline communication infrastructure that gives first responders a simple interface for managing all aspects of a disaster.

The physical “clusterduck” network is made of many individual IoT "ducks," which can float in flooded areas if needed. Only five are needed to cover a square mile, and they create a mesh network where users can report information such as their well-being and needs like food and water.

The conversational piece becomes useful on the OWL web application that is used by first responders (think of the OWL web app like the main software brain in the cloud). First responders can talk to this web app to easily see and explore all the data added to OWL, regardless of whether that data comes from APIs, is loaded by first responders, or uploaded by a civilian through the clusterduck network.

This application, the OWL software incident management system, uses predictive analytics and multiple data sources to build a dashboard for first responders.

“Once this network of ducks is deployed and then clustered, civilians are able to basically get on the devices through a really intuitive interface and contact first responders with a list of things that are really essential to them," team member Magus Pereira said.

With this information, Project OWL allows first responders to manage a disaster, coordinate resources, learn about weather patterns, and get information data analytics through the cloud. The solution bakes in the latest IBM Watson Studio, Watson Cloud APIs, and Weather Company APIs — all built on the IBM Cloud.

In addition to the cash prize, Project OWL will be deployed by IBM Corporate Service Corps in 2019. The team members, who come from New York, North Carolina, and Texas, will have the opportunity to pitch OWL to venture capitalist firm New Enterprise Associates (NEA) for potential funding.

The second place winner, Post-Disaster Rapid Response Retrofit (PD3R) from Kathmandu, Nepal, and Bogotá, Colombia created a solution to provide displaced families with immediate access to engineering advice following a natural disaster, seeing the damage caused by the 2015 Nepal earthquake. Their solution is based on AI taught by 3D model images.

San Francisco Bay Area team Lali Wildfire Detection, now based in the Netherlands, France, and Ecuador, created a solution to predict the spread of wildfires in real-time with the use of sensor networks. Inspired by a teammate's first-hand experience growing up surrounded by fires in Ecuador, Project Lali took third place.

PD3R and Project Lali were each awarded USD $25,000. All three winning solutions will also receive long-term open source support from The Linux Foundation.

As heartened as we are by the response, there is always room for more people to get involved. We need champions, advocates, and most of all, we need developers to help renew faith in our ability to overcome one of the greatest challenges facing society today.

We can't prevent natural disasters, but the development community can come together to create solutions to improve the current state of disaster preparedness and recover efforts.

What will you do to help answer the call in 2019?

To discover more about this work, join us at Think 2019 February 12-15 in San Francisco, California. Visit the conference website here to register.

This article originally ran on August 23, 2018 and was updated on December 21, 2018.

This post is sponsor content from IBM and was created by IBM and Insider Studios.

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