04/19/2020 02:02:34 PM
A dengue case forecasting system using space data made by Filipino developers won the 2019 National Aeronautics and Space Administration's International Space Apps Challenge.
Out of 29,000 participants from over 71 countries, the Pinoy solution made it as one of the six winners in the best use of data, the solution that best makes space data accessible, or leverages it to a unique application.
Dengue fever is known as a viral, infectious tropical disease spread primarily by Aedes aegypti female mosquitoes. In an eight-month stretch (1 January to 31 August 2019) last year, there were 271,480 cases and in 1,107 deaths reported by the World Health Organization.
That said, the group of Dominic Vincent D. Ligot, Mark Toledo, Frances Claire Tayco, and Jansen Dumaliang Lopez from CirroLytix developed a forecasting model of dengue cases using climate and digital data and pinpointing possible hotspots from satellite data.
Correlating information from Sentinel-2 Copernicus and Landsat 8 satellites, climate data from the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST-PAGASA) and trends from Google search engines, potential dengue hotspots will be shown in a web interface.
Using satellite spectral bands like green, red, and near-infrared (NIR), indices like Fraction of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (FAPAR) and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) are calculated in identifying areas with green vegetation while Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI) identifies areas with water. Combining these indices reveal potential areas of stagnant water capable of being breeding grounds for mosquitoes, extracted as coordinates through a free and open-source cross-platform desktop geographic information system QGIS.
"AEDES aims to improve public health response against dengue fever in the Philippines by pinpointing possible hotspots using Earth observations," explained Dr. Argyro Kavvada of NASA Earth Science and Booz Allen Hamilton.
DOST-Philippine Council for Industry, Energy and Emerging Technology Research and Development (DOST-PCIEERD) deputy executive director Engr. Raul C. Sabularse said that the winning solution might be of help to the disease-plagued countries.
“I think it has a global impact. This is the new science to know the potential areas where dengue might occur. It is a good app."
"It is very relevant to the Philippines and other countries which usually having problems with dengue. The team was able to show that it's not really difficult to have all the data you need and integrate all of them and make them accessible to everyone for them to be able to use it. It's a working model," said Monchito B. Ibrahim, industry development committee chairman of the Analytics Association of the Philippines and former undersecretary of the Department of Information and Communications Technology.
This, according to Sec. De la Peña, was the country's second victory in the global competition organized by NASA. The first winning solution called ISDApp uses "data analysis, particularly NASA data, to be able to help our fishermen make decisions on when is the best time to catch fish." It is currently being incubated by Animo Labs, the technology business incubator and Fab Lab of De La Salle University in partnership with DOST-PCIEERD, and the same incubator of the Project AEDES.
University president Br. Raymundo B. Suplido FSC hopes that NASA Space Apps would "encourage our young Filipino researchers and scientists to create ideas and startups based on space science and technology, and pave the way for the promotion and awareness of the programs of our own Philippine space agency."
Meanwhile, Vice President Leni Robredo has recognized Space Apps as a platform "where some of our country's brightest minds can collaborate in finding and creating solutions to our most pressing problems, not just in space, but more importantly here on Earth."
"Space Apps is a community of scientists and engineers, artists and hackers coming together to address key issues here on Earth. At the heart of Space Apps are data that come to us from spacecraft flying around Earth and are looking at our world," explained by Dr. Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA associate administrator for science.
"Personally, I'm more interested in supporting the startups that are coming out of the Space Apps Challenge," according to DOST-PCIEERD executive director Dr. Enrico C. Paringit.
In the Philippines, Space Apps is a NASA-led incubator innovation program in collaboration with De La Salle University, Animo Labs, DOST-PCIEERD, PLDT InnoLab, American Corner Manila, U.S. Embassy, software developer Michael Lance M. Domagas, and celebrates the Design Week Philippines with the Design Center of the Philippines of the Department of Trade and Industry. It is globally organized by Booz Allen Hamilton, Mindgrub, and SecondMuse.
The next hackathon will take place this 2-4 October 2020.
Author: slickmaster | © 2020 The SlickMaster's Files
No comments:
Post a Comment
Feel free to make a comment as long as it is within the bounds of the issue, and as long as you do it with decency. Thanks!