Inspiration
Early Warning System (EWS1294 for short) was created in 2013 following massive floods in Cambodia. The goal of the system is warn rural and vulnerable populations in the country against floods and other natural disasters, and has historically been a phone-call based warning system. However, with the recent years' growth of Facebook in the region, as well as a wish for a more regional-level, scalable, solution, the plan was hatched to build a Facebook page and chatbot in order to reach as many people as possible.
What it does
The EWS consists of 3 pillars: Audience registration, hazard detection, and warning dissemination. The page and chatbot fits into the first and third of the pillars, allowing people to register to the system, and subsequently, when warnings are issued by the Cambodian Government, receive warnings specific to their locations.
How I built it
Using Claudia.js and NodeJS, hosted on AWS Lambda with persistent state stored in DynamoDB. Having created this for an NGO, a key requirement is as minimal ongoing costs as possible, making the free tiers of AWS and DynamoDB ideal for the project.
Challenges I ran into
Persistent states were a bit tricky, as well as coding this without NLP (as it will primarily be released in Khmer, which has no NLP yet - Furthermore, it would add significant costs to use machine learning).
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
This is my first chatbot, so I'm pretty happy that I was able to complete it within the timeframe. Apart from this, i'm naturally proud that this system will potentially save human lives and livelihoods in the near future as we release it in Cambodia, and subsequently in the region (funding pending).
What I learned
Everything about creating a chatbot - It's been a great "starter" project. Furthermore, I learned that the Facebook functionality is quick to change - We originally designed the chatbot back in summer 2019 where it was for example still possible to issue ask for a "location reply", but this feature has since been removed.
What's next for Early Warning System 1294 Chatbot
Translation to Khmer, approval by the National Committee for Disaster Management in Cambodia, and then public release. hopefully all before flood season starts in July. After this, we're currently looking for funding to move our entire system into Loas, where we will start with the Chatbot as the primary dissemination channel, adding phone calls and sms only upon successful scaling.
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