EO Dashboard Hackathon

The Innovators | Storytelling in the COVID-19 Era

Storytelling in the COVID-19 Era

The longer human activities are changed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the more visible, wider, and longer lasting the scope of environmental impacts may be. Your challenge is to tell a visual story about the impacts of the pandemic using Earth observation data and other complementary information.

The innovators

Summary

Our project aims to increase the knowledge and the awareness of people on Covid-19 and its impacts on the environment, economy, education, social life, and more information about the vaccinations that were made. We made a website https://innovators95.000webhostapp.com/ and an animated video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6e3AFsuFBso that illustrates everything related to covid-19 in an engaging thrilling way.

How I Addressed This Challenge

After brainstorming sessions together, we realized that a lot of people do not know about the impacts of the pandemic globally and locally and it is essential to know more information about the current pandemic, so we decided to develop a solution that is going to raise the awareness of people about these topics in an engaging way. Our solution is an animated video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6e3AFsuFBso, and a website https://innovators95.000webhostapp.com/ that will explain COVID-19 and its impacts and the vaccinations The animated video is like a short film that tells the story of covid-19, it is also going to have subtitles for deaf people. The website has all of the information you want to know about covid-19 and its impacts in detail. Our solution aims to raise awareness about the pandemic and educate people more about it.

How I Developed This Project

There are many factors that inspired us to work in this challenge, the most important of which is the widespread spread of the Coronavirus to become a threat to all humanity in different continents, it was also the reason for the sudden cessation of all business and economic activities suddenly, as this affected us as well, which led to the suspension of educational activity for a period and then intermittent attendance to keep up with the study, and we hadn't known about this virus except the information spread among people about its symptoms and the cases of infection that rise tremendously every day, and as Winston Churchill said “The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty.”, we found this project as a great opportunity that encourages knowledge of everything related to this disease from the beginning of its inception to the development of the necessary vaccinations to confront and eliminate it, then communicating this information to people in a simple way to contribute to raising awareness and eliminating this pandemic.

Our project went through several stages and procedures to be accomplished, as initially the team was formed with the participation of six talented members in various fields, then the appropriate challenge was identified, which is telling the story of COVID 19, then determining the main requirements of the project which is creating a website to raise awareness and knowledge of the details of this virus, its causes, symptoms and methods examination, treatment, impacts on different fields and developing a way to prepare it, simplify its content and make a video to increase the fun, and then we developed primitive designs, collected the necessary information, and we have modified it, increased the details and research to reach the best results and solutions.

We have already used some tools, electronic devices such as laptops, microphones in recording, some programming languages such as HTML in making the website's structure and elements, CSS in making website style, design and animation, JavaScript in the website’s animation. We used also Blender 3D software in making the video animation and Microsoft PowerPoint in preparing the presentation.

We have encountered some problems during the implementation of this project, such as a full understanding of the details of the coronavirus vaccination, and how to present this information in a simple and fun scientific way that suits different ages, and also making it suitable for people with special needs by preparing a video and making the site audible to help the blind or those who are bored of reading to get for this information.

We have also achieved many achievements, such as making the site attractive, finishing the video in all its details with our personal effort, and the cooperation of all members in writing the script, making animation, and adding voice comments. We have also simplified the information and various sources to make it easier for people to obtain the necessary information about this virus and its various impacts in Egypt and worldwide.

How I Used Space Agency Data in This Project

At first, we read these data then we started to collect what we need after that we wrote what we collect in an organized way. We use these data to know some information that supports our project:

https://earthdata.nasa.gov/covid19/discoveries/air-quality/aq-and-covid

From this link, we knew that the nitrogen dioxide levels fell by more than 30% during the height of COVID-related shutdowns. Also, the percentage of nitrogen dioxide's emissions decreased by a large percentage, during the quarantine period, on airports due to the complete closure of the airports but after the reopening of some airports, this percentage increased again.

https://earthdata.nasa.gov/covid19/discoveries/water-quality/water-quality-during-pandemic

From this link, we knew that in the great lakes region, scientists observed that there is a slight increase in the rate of chlorophyll-a and suspended sediment concentrations in the Western Basin of Lake Erie, which considered the most affected lake part by human activities and agriculture. Research is ongoing, however, as scientists are unsure whether these changes are due to COVID-19 related behavioral changes or no. Also, we knew that In Italy, due to the massive decrease in the movement of tourist boats, the waters in Lake Venice, within the North Adriatic Sea, appeared purer and cleaner.

https://earthdata.nasa.gov/covid19/indicators/co2

From this link, we knew that the carbon dioxide percentage has decreased significantly during the quarantine period, but this decrease is only a temporary decrease, and this decrease was also followed by a similar decrease in the percentage of short-lived air pollutants, such as nitrogen dioxide (NO2).

https://earthdata.nasa.gov/covid19/indicators/agriculture

From this link, we knew that coronavirus has unevenly impacted global food supply chains. In higher-income countries with more isolated agricultural communities and less intensive cultivation techniques, the virus's spread has had a minimal effect on key staple crops like wheat, maize, rice, and soybeans. Also, in some middle and lower-income countries where mandatory shelter-in-place orders have strained the cultivation of labor-intensive crops, the U.N. World Food Program estimated that the pandemic could double the number of people facing acute food shortages by the end of 2020.

Project Demo

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rLeQFOVkUV6ojYwI-pH-OQ6vq42TTFjU/view?usp=sharing.

Earth Observing Dashboard Integration

Our solution is storytelling about the COVID-19 pandemic in this era. So, our solution is started with explaining what is COVID-19, its origin, and the mechanism of this disease. Also, our solution contains the symptoms of COVID-19 to make people who will read our website more aware of the disease. Then we talk about the impacts of COVID-19 on a lot of fields. First, we talk about the impacts of COVID-19 on the social life of different classes of society and make these impacts as an indicator. Second, we wrote about the educational field and how COVID-19 affects it in positive and negative ways. Then we talked about the environmental impacts of COVID-19, and how the environment was the first thing that benefits from COVID-19 and the cassation of human activities, also we talked about the negative effects on it. After that, we show how Coronavirus affects the economy, and how the global economy was severely affected by this pandemic. We talked about impacts on these fields locally and globally. At the end of our solution, we talked about vaccination and the types of vaccines.

There are common topics between our solution and the EO dashboard, like:

Air quality and the greenhouse gases, you can find these in the EO dashboard and our solution in the impacts on the environment. Also, COVID-19 data is in the EO dashboard and our solution, we talked about the origin of COVID-19, its symptoms, and its mechanism in our solution.

Some of the impacts that we mentioned in the video and the web aren't in the EO dashboard as social life (the percentage of people who suffer from mental illnesses) and (the suffering of people with disabilities during the pandemic) and education. So, they are new indicators that can be put in the EO dashboard.