High-Level Project Summary
The world we live in has been profoundly altered by technological advancements over many years. The abuse and destruction of our natural world have been a result of technology developments' influence on the environment. Higher levels of vulnerability to severe events, particularly floods, have recently been seen across the world, and are becoming the "new normal." To deal with this problem, our team creates Mega Trunk, a superhero. Mega Trunk was inspired by mangrove trees, which act as a first line of defence against floods in tropical areas and has several flood-prevention characteristics, such as strong roots to securely grab the earth, radar sensor for flood detection and many more.
Link to Project "Demo"
Link to Final Project
Detailed Project Description
To highlight the details of our project, we created a 3-minute video link. The video link is https://drive.google.com/file/d/150oZAtuslAzOSJeAh38eOqudPRvtqb4q/view?usp=sharing. In addition, we've included a write-up below. Please have a look!
Impacts of flooding
Over the course of many years, technological breakthroughs have drastically changed the world we live in. In both emerging and developed countries, increased vulnerability to extreme events, particularly floods, is becoming the "new normal" (Mirza, 2003; Thomalla et al., 2006). The population, assets, and expansion are all quickly increasing. Those in the residential and business sectors who are at risk. During these episodes, damages can occur (Hallegatte et al., 2013; Singh, 2013). (Zommers et al., 2014). Furthermore, while flood-related deaths have fallen significantly in recent decades, this is due to a combination of factors. Even though early warning systems and flood control structures have improved, statistics show that individuals are still (in)directly affected by these catastrophes. At their annual disaster data analysis of 2016, GuhaSapir et al. (2016) reported that 78.1 million people were affected by hydrologic disasters (floods or landslides), accounting for about 13.7 percent of all people who are affected in 2016. It's also worth mentioning that one flood in China impacted 60 million of the 78.1 million people.
Inspiration of the project's solution
Mangrove, a multitasker in the world of ocean and river wealth. Mangroves are vital for shielding coastal populations from the effects of climate change in many regions around the world, in addition to providing habitat for both artisanal and commercially fished species, sequestering carbon, and promoting tourism. Mangroves' aerial roots trap sediment and prevent erosion, while mangrove roots, trunks, and canopy minimize the force of oncoming waves and storm surge, resulting with much less flooding. Figure 1 shows the comparison the wave height of the ocean with or without the mangrove. 
Figure 1: Dynamics of wave with or without mangroves
Design concept of the personalized earth's ability
Inspired by the mangrove which plays a role as the first line of defence against flooding in tropical forests or along the coast, our team make up our mind to personalize the mangrove into a superhero, who we named "Mega Trunk". Figure 2 depicts the superhero that designed by our team.
Figure 2: Mega Trunk (Hero that personalized from one of the earth's abilities)
Characteristics and benefits of Mega Trunk are hereunder:
1) Mega Trunk's hair and clothing are made of leaves.
2) The Mega Trunk's ear is shaped like an elf's ear which aids them to hear further and it also can receive the signal transmitted by the NASA satellite and take actions immediately whenever the flooding occurs.
3) Mega Trunk's hands can transform into the aerial root. It retains sediments in rest, anchoring coastal soil and decreasing erosion, lowering flood heights, and diminishing the intensity of wind and swell waves that pass over them.
4) Mega Trunk possesses a sturdy body as he requires a lot of energy to retain or capture the soil when attempting to minimize the impact of flood.
5) The limbs of the Mega Trunk will turn into the roots that acts act as the support of him when holding the sediments of soil.
Extra superpower that possessed by the Earth
In future, our team hopes to witness there is an existence of unknown creature on Earth where it is capable to absorb all the overflowing water. Apart from that, it will also rain the water soaked up from the deluge on wherever countries that are suffering from water scarcity and rising temperatures. And this is also what we hope to be solved in future despite of flooding.
Software used in this project
Adobe Illustrator: Draw Mega Trunk
Filmora: Video editing
Powerpoint: Prepare the video script for the video
Space Agency Data
In our study, we investigated global changes that contribute to floods and the impact of flooding on the planet over the course of a year using numerous NASA open resources.
We noted a rise of 2.1 degrees Fahrenheit since 1880, a loss in arctic ice minimum of 13.0 percent each decade, 428 billion metric tonnes of ice sheets every year, and a 3.4 mm rise in sea level per year from Climate Change and Global Warming https://climate.nasa.gov/. The smallest amount of Artic Sea ice was recorded at 4.72 million square kilometres in 2021. It's really upsetting when massive climate change raises the likelihood of floods.
Furthermore, we detected floods in Mali's Dela in the summer of 2020 from https://climate.nasa.gov/images-of-change?id=762#762-flooding-in-malis-delta. Seasonal floods on the Niger River and in central Mali's huge inland delta, which was formerly a lake bottom, were severely exacerbated by extremely high rainfall in the Guinea Highlands of West Africa. Peak water levels in Mali equaled those of 2018, which were the highest since 1969, according to the National Directorate of Water Resources.
Hackathon Journey
This is our first time participating in a NASA-organized 48-hour worldwide hackathon. This is an exciting opportunity for us, especially because we have access to NASA's open-source data. When we were looking over the challenges, the superpowearth challenge caught our attention. In recent days, there has been an increase in the frequency of devastating calamities, particularly big floods, which have occurred right in front of our eyes. We were all believing that if the Earth has superpowers, there would be no tragedy. We attended a number of virtual meetings via Google Meet to discuss the major global issues, and the topic of floods was chosen. From there, we gathered ideas and were inspired by the tropical mangrove plants. Finally, we introduced Mega Trunk, a superhero that seems to be a tree and has flood-prevention abilities. Thank you so much to Space Apps Sarawak for putting on such a fantastic event.
References
References:
Guha-Sapir, D., Below, R., and Hoyois, P. (2016) EM-DAT: The CRED, OFDA International Disaster Database. Retrieved 3 October 2021, from https://www.emdat.be.
Hallegatte, S., Green, C., Nicholls, R. J., and Corfee-Morlot, J. (2013).Future flood losses in major coastal cities, Nat. Clim. Change, 3, 802–806.
Mirza, M. M. Q. (2003). Climate change and extreme weather events: can developing countries adapt?, Climate Policy, 3, 233–248.
Najibi, N., & Devineni, N. (2018). Recent trends in the frequency and duration of global floods. Retrieved 2 October 2021, from https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1618&context=cc_pubs.
Singh, A. and Zommers, Z. 2(014). Reducing Disaster: Early Warning Systems For Climate Change, Springer Netherlands, the Netherlands.
Thomalla, F., Downing, T., Spanger-Siegfried, E., Han, G., and Rockström, J. (2006) Reducing hazard vulnerability: towards a common approach between disaster risk reduction and climate adaptation, Disasters, 30, 39–48.
Tags
#flood #mangrove #climate change #superhero #environment