Neptune's physics

Quake

High-Level Project Summary

Landslides are quite a problematic nowadays. Luckily, our team Neptune´s Physics developed an app, Quake, to help in these cases. In order to do this, our sistem divides itself in three tools:1- A blog where people can upload information about the local landslides and show it to nearby people2- An information part that displays facts about how to behave and act before, during and after a landslide3- And a seccion where you could see posible landslides near you caused by flood, earthquakes and human activity.

Link to Project "Demo"

https://youtu.be/tX4oNK5Mywk

Link to Final Project

https://framer.com/share/5erKtf1iuA4u5P2lH7nL/uvR6ac7g_?editor=1#jgJYmiNol

Detailed Project Description

Part of our goal is to achieve the United States Geological Survey (USGS) Goal “The primary goal of the National Landslide Hazards Program is to reduce long-term losses from landslide by improving our understanding of it, its causes and suggesting mitigation strategies. "

The development of our application consists of three sections sequentially ordered and made with very simple access:

Provide information about how to act before, during and after the disaster, and calculation tools (mostly statistics) with information provided by HDEV and SENTINEL-5 satellites;
Access to a community blog where the user can publish information in real time. These posts will be checked by geographers and cartographers to determine how accurate it is, so as to prevent fake news
Here we present QUAKY which has 3 subdivisions (earthquakes, rains and maps) where you could see posible landslides near you caused by this facts. It is important to clarify that the last section requires data that is not freely accessible, so our application gives the option to choose between users and organizations.

The basic information that our application needs will be a map of the region to be analyzed, paying attention to the most vulnerable areas (seismic and rain), and topographic characteristics. We can obtain this using images from the Sentinel 5 and HDEV satellites, also taking advantage of programs such as Google Maps.

Now, we are going to explain each section deeply. Join us!

FIRST SECTION:

Provide information to both types of users, the first (individual) about how to behave before, during and after the disaster; and to the second (government or business) the statistics and tools of calculus

-First type of user: Personal: To maintain informed all the community, Quake has a help/information section, where they will be provided with tools too afronts landslides in a conscious way

-Second type of users: Organizations/Government: In this part, they will find with all the calculus and statistics facts to act with an economic and social look. All the info will be described below this:

Danger caused by earthquakes:

Seismic Risk= potential danger * vulnerability * cost

Seismic Risk::

[R] = [H] * [V] * [SL]

H: Seismic Hazard: Probability that the social or economic consequences produced by an earthquake will equal or exceed predetermined values, for a given location or geographic area. In order to get this equation we analyze three elements

V: Seismic Vulnerability: Quantification of the damage that is expected to happen in a certain structure due to a strong earthquake or seismic

SL: Seismic Losses: Value of the economic and losses produced by an earthquake

The seismic danger only depends on the geographic location of the site, while the seismic vulnerability and losses depend on the construction characteristics of the area and its socio-economic characteristics: Infrastructure Damage rate (A1), Interruption rate Service (B1) and the rate of Direct Economic Loss resulting from Damaged or Destroyed Critical Infrastructure (C1) are calculated as follows.

A1: =infrastructure damage / population * 100.000

B1: = number of interruptions occurred/ population * 100,000

C1: = Sum of direct economic losses of buildings and other costs

SECOND SECTION:

Access to a community blog where the user can publish information in real time. These posts will be checked by geographers and cartographers to determine how accurate it is, so as to prevent fake news

This part will provide the users and organizations the opportunity to interact with each other and upload information related to landslides and natural disasters. In order to avoid fake news every thing that the people post will be blue until an expert (of Allen laboratory) verifies if it´s reliable

THIRD SECTION:

Here we present QUAKY which has 3 subdivisions (earthquakes, rains and maps) where you could see posible landslides near you caused by this facts. It is important to clarify that the last section requires data that is not freely accessible, so our application gives the option to choose between users and organizations.

Will show you what QUAKY is and how it works!

Most countries with high seismicity have a detection network that informs the early warning system. The system, at the moment it confirms the earthquake through seismic detectors, sends an alarm signal to different public organisms, such as schools, police and firefighters; to the industry, to public transport systems and the media to warn the population.

How does it work?

Quaky will use the accelerometers that smartphones have incorporated, these have three accelerometers (despite of not being very sensitive) allow the detection of earthquakes of magnitude 5 or higher whose epicenter is 10 km away. The potential strength is that there are many smartphones in the world, which will provide a cheap network of detection and, eventually, warning.

Accelerometers record phone shake and the app analyzes the data. Quaky compares the vibrations with the profiles of earthquakes. If the pattern matches, it sends a packet of basic data to Allen's lab: moment and amplitude of the shake and position of the phone provided by the GPS. The cloud software analyzes all the data it receives, and if at least four phones detect movement and represent 60% of the phones located within 10 km of the epicenter, the program confirms an earthquake. The researchers check this information sent by the phones against data from the California Integrated Earthquake Network, which monitors ground movements across the state using seismographs.

Algorithm:

The algorithm that the application uses to analyze the acceleration data and distinguish earthquakes is intended to result in various simulation tests successful in 93% of the cases. “The more people, in more places in the world, download the application, the faster we will be able to collect data and verify the proper functioning of the system."

Science by citizens: Once verified that the detection is accurate, they will develop the alarm system for users outside the epicenter, which will show them a countdown until the shock arrives. "It is necessary that the population is aware of the seismic danger in their area, and drills are held periodically." Unfortunately, this collaborative earthquake detection may be the only option to give an early warning in countries with seismic activity, which do not have a network of earthquake detection stations (or very weak).

Space Agency Data

The data we used of NASA and ESA are:

Sentinel-5 of ESA

HDEV (high definition earth viewing)

How this inspired us?

Our app needs satellites of video with real time transmission because the information that we use has to be actualize constantly. That is why we decided to make use of the satellites of the continuous monitoring, wich will help us to evaluate the magnitude of the damage and estimate costs

We picked the HDEV satellite due to its accomplish of our requirements that we previously named being the cameras a fixed system that does not require zoom, nor mechanisms of horizontal or vertical movement. It does not record video aboard the ISS, all video is transmitted to Earth in real time.

The use of Sentinel-5 will also be necessary, which is part of the European Earth Observation Program "Copernicus", coordinated and managed by the European Commission (EC). The space component of the Copernicus observing infrastructure is developed under the auspices of the European Space Agency (ESA) because it provides us with a wonderful atmospheric monitoring, which will be useful when making use of "Quake"

Hackathon Journey

This project was one of the most inspiring and interesting things we have ever done. These two days showed us that science is available to everyone and can help everyone as well.

We chose this challenge because, since we live in an earthquake-zone, we know how difficult it is to collect data and use it in order to improve how we behave when such a thing happens. At first, it was kind of hard to find the exact information we were looking for, but after reading books and internet pages, we found what we needed in order to work properly.

The hours of working were long, and sometimes it seemed like we were running out of time, but thanks to the mentors of our location (escencialy Mendoza) we worked that out in a marvelous way. Having said that, we are especially grateful with TMSA (the mars society Argentina) for giving us the possibility to participate in such a exquisite experience and help everyone to learn and have an amazing time while working

References

Global Judging

This project has been submitted for consideration during the Judging process.