Space Apps Challenge 2017

PROJECTBACKGROUND

Dayin day out, geographers, business men, researchers,students, andothersare faced with the challenge of understanding complex scientificterms. Most discouraging is the fact that available resources arefew, limited and outdated.

Professionalbodies and organizations have invaluable data which the public andscientists alike encounter difficulty interpreting. Hence a vacuum in the learning system. LexOrb solves this problem.

CHALLENGESFACED

• Howdo we acquire reliable data from the public?
• Howdo we boost public participation in crowd sourcing?
• Howdo we make this information available in local languages?
• Howdo we visualize data and make it easily understandable and fun toperuse?
• Howdo we structure and categorize retrieved data?
• Howdo we carter for search of abbreviations and acronyms?

WHATWE BUILT

Adictionary in a dictionary. Earth in a book. LexOrb runs on a Nginxserver and makes use of varnish for web acceleration. Digicert SSLand Global Sign for security and Amazon route name server. Emailservices like Send Grid, Google Apps for business, Sender PolicyFrame(SPF) will be used. It will be hosted on AWS to ensurescalability.

Thefollowing frameworks were implored for development:

• HTML5
• CSS3
• PHP
• Laravel
• RubyOn Rails
• JSFrameworks: Ionic, Jquery, Electron, Facebook SDK, React, HTML5History API, Webpack, Javascript Game Engine, Video JS, and D3.jsfor data visualization.

Takingbest practices into cognizance, we have used these technologies todevelop a learning experience that truly makes study and research intoscience as a whole and the earth as a case in point a thrillingexperience.

Usershave access to crowd sourced data which is properly categorized andpresented through texts, audios, images, videos, animations,simulations, charts and interesting games without losing sight of thetarget; “Knowledge Acquisition”. Fun facts are also presented tothe user at intervals. The coolest part is that all these informationis accessible in a language of choice and statistics are localized bymaking use of geo-location except the user indicates otherwise.

Inorder to ensure accuracy and reliability of user submissions, allsubmissions are validated by acknowledged experts in the field ofconcern. As a means to boost public participation in crowd-sourcing,incentives are introduced. Users and editors alike are credited andreferenced as the case may be on their submissions. Top contributorsare rewarded and users get to gain more recognition in their field asthey interact via the forum/community feature of the site. Ouralgorithm makes good use of key-value pairs to connect acronyms andabbreviations with their full meaning. With a technology likeG-translate, we intend translating all content to other languages.Translated content is always verified for semantics as well.

LexOrbis BIG. IT IS THE FUTURE. In the near future, LexOrb becomesthe repository of all scientific knowledge.

RESOURCESUSED

• NASAHuman Spaceflight acronyms
• NASASpace Communications and
• Navigationacronyms
• NASAScience site glossary
• NASAScience current, past, and future Earth Science missions
• NASAimage library (includes audio and video)
• NASA’sSoftware Robotics and Simulation Division
• NASAScientific Visualization Studio
• NASA’scitizen science projects
• NASA'sEarth Science Data Systems Program
• NASA'sEarth data site

OtherResources:

• Merriam-Webster:Check out the Earth section
• https://visuwords.com/
• Geology.com
• EarthExplorer