Reducing the impact of natural disasters in the Bahamas one grain of soil at a time.
💡 Inspiration
I recently came across a study by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), which mentioned that soil management practices can reduce the risk of landslides by up to 60%, and can reduce erosion rates by up to 90%.
This is especially true for the Bahamas, being susceptible to soil erosion due to the presence of vulnerable soil types - further exacerbated by heavy rainfall events and tropical cyclones in the region.
This made me realise that disaster mapping based on soil types can help identify areas with highly erodible soils and inform soil conservation efforts, such as the use of terracing, contouring or mulching.
I also realised I could take this a step further by taking soil data and soil conservation into context with rainfall and tropical cyclone events in the region.
And that's how the idea of SoilSafe was born.
🌱 What it does
SoilSafe is a web-based solution that provides mapping and soil conservation planning & management for the Bahamas based on dominant soil types, rainfall and tropical cyclone events, aiming to help develop plans and management strategies reduce the impact of natural disasters in the region.
There are two settings of the SoilSafe web app: Explore and Manage
i. Explore As it says in the title, this is the setting where we can explore the map of the Bahamas, which breaks down into the dominant soil types of the regions. Hovering over each region on the map shows us the scientific name of the dominant soil type, a description of the soil, and vulnerabilities that arise due to the presence of this soil type with reference to rainfall and cyclone events.
ii. Manage This is where the real fun happens.
The Manage setting allows us to build custom high-level soil conservation plans for the Bahamas. Each dominant soil type has different soil conservation management practices that are best suited for it, and we can go ahead and place markers on the map that represent soil conservation measures for that region.
We can also enable the "rainfall" and "tropical cyclone" layers on the map to help finegrain our plans further and put our soil conservation plans into perspective with predicted weather events for a 1 week period. These plans can then be used to expose vulnerable areas (e.g. regions within the boundaries of extreme weather events where soil conservation measures have not been planned) and aid in disaster risk reduction & management strategies.
Want to keep track of multiple plans we have created? There is a 💾 Save functionality that we can use to download individual plans we have developed. This then downloads a JSON format file of the plan we have created, which we can store in our local filesystem or share with others.
Received a plan from someone else or want to work on a saved plan? Use the 📑 Import functionality which parses the JSON file of the imported plan and displays it to the user on the map. This import & save functionality also brings an element of collaboration to the soil conservation plans that we build on SoilSafe. We can save & share our plans with others who can then import our plans in the app and add new conservation measures, and vice-versa. This collaborative aspect truly helps bring out the power of working together to develop high level plans.
🗜️ How it was built
Geospatial Data Sources -
Digital Soil Map of the World (FAO/UNESCO) - link
Esri Shapefile filtered for the Bahamas region and converted to GeoJSON to display on web-based map
Global Tropics Hazards Outlook Enhanced Precipitation Probability (NOAA National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) - link
Converted to GeoJSON format to display on web-based map This data is updated on a weekly basis by the NOAA
Global Tropics Hazards Outlook Tropical Cyclone Formation Probability (NOAA National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) - link
Converted to GeoJSON format to display on web-based map This data is updated on a weekly basis by the NOAA
HTML, CSS and (Vanilla) JavaScript - the backbone of any web-based solution. Lightweight and fast to run in the browser.
LeafletJS - An open-source JavaScript library for interactive maps.
🔮 What's next for SoilSafe
Beyond the scope of a short hackathon, there are a number of additional features that would be handy to implement into SoilSafe to bring an even deeper level of granularity to the soil conservation plans we can currently build in it.
These include making use of additional datasets e.g. i. populated regions data (e.g. HOTOSM Bahamas Populated Places dataset) to add a layer of populated regions to the map. This could help plan soil conservation measures closer to or within populated areas that are home to communities. or ii. infrastructure data i.e. roads, railways, ports (e.g. HOTOSM OpenStreetMap exports) to add an infrastructure perspective to the map. This could help plan soil conservation measures closer to critical infrastructure. ...Just to name a couple!
Furthermore, the collaborative aspect of SoilSafe could be taken a step further beyond the current save/import functionality by introducing real-time collaboration (think of the real-time collaborative aspect of technologies such as Google Docs, but as a map-based version) where multiple individuals could work together to develop plans on the same map simultaneously, further aiding speed and collaboration for which plans could be set up during events of disaster, where precious seconds are of extreme importance. This is possible using current technologies such as WebRTC and WebSockets. However, would take a considerable amount of time to implement and perfect.
Ultimately, the possibilities seem endless and I am very excited to be able to continue expanding the application.
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