CLiMATES

Inspiration

We are personally motivated by a quote that resonates with each of us... "Be the catalyst of change you want in the world." Our focus during this hackathon was to design something of significant importance to ourselves, our society and our planet, while maintaining a well-defined scope of feasibility such that our implementation can actually be used in its current state. Our main goals were:

Combat climate change with technology and data.
Use Google Cloud to implement our hard and creative work for other to use.
Use Courier to give user life-saving alerts on dangerous and ever-changing weather conditions.

What it does

Our project tackles climate change by allowing an individual to gain useful information about their neighbourhood, city or desired location through our application, hosted on Google Cloud. We performed a statistical (regression) analysis on a location's weather data for a sufficient time period to determine how the climate in that area is being affected by climate change and the pollution in that area. A by-product of changing climate is highly variable weather like intense rainfall, snowstorms, high/low temperatures, humidity, etc. We use Courier's product to give live updates to registered users, warning them of dangerous weather conditions before they leave the house or when a change has been detected.

How we built it

We were able to create an effective project plan by highlighting what was of exceptional importance to each group member - fortunately we all had the same objective in mind, an application that can help better one's society. We then created a UML diagrams to highlight the project scope and divide up the work amongst each group member in accordance to their strengths/weaknesses. Lastly, we worked away, helped each other whenever needed and referred to a mentor when we got stuck on any of the sponsor tools.

Challenges we ran into

Because this is our first hackathon, we encountered many issues that we've used as learning opportunities. This was also the first time that we integrated multiple API's that interface with one another. Thankfully, we approached problems collaboratively, walking through the process and come up with a project plan. The challenges we faced include:

Although using Courier was an easy task with their built-in tools, using their third-party tool for integration with features like emailing, SMS alerts, push notification and various alert methods was difficult as they all had different interfaces and login credentials.
Google Cloud was not an API that we had experience using, but the Mentors were an excellent help at providing us with a solid foundational understanding to get our application implemented and running on Google Cloud.
Doing an in depth analysis of weather data against historical averages that utilize statistical principles like regression techniques and automating the cleaning of data was a rabbit whole that we overcame by going back to the basics of Math & Stats.
Time constraints, 24 hours was not a lot of time to implement multiple API's, feature, functions and create a working application... but we were able to overcome this through teamwork and understanding.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are amazed by what we've accomplished! In just 24 hours we were able to use Courier, Google Cloud, OpenWeatherMaps, statistical analysis principles and hopefully enabled an impact to be made on climate change. TOHacks 2021 was such an amazing experience that it has motivated us to participate in more hackathon event and try to solve even more ambitious problems with the new technologies available to us through the amazing sponsors.

What we learned

We have learned so much as individuals and as a team. We learned the following skills and tools:

Courier - how to alert users of dangerous weather conditions with suggestion on various different platforms.
Google Cloud - how to host an application.
Teamwork - the importance of breaking a large problem into smaller problems, supporting each other when necessary, and respecting each other's opinions and views.
Our Climate and Society - our application can be used to directly help individuals counter climate change, pollution and dangerous weather conditions.

What's next for CLiMATES

We want to add additional support and integrate these features into an iOS and Android application that utilize Google Maps to create a visual representation of important historical data deviations that give insight into climate change, in any individual's neighbourhood or city.