Space Apps Challenge 2017

Radaway | Mayday, Mayday, Mayday!

Singapore

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Radaway has received the following awards and nominations. Way to go!

Galactic Impact

The solution with the most potential to improve life on Earth or in the universe.

The Challenge | Mayday, Mayday, Mayday!

Calculate and visualize the radiation exposure for an actual or hypothetical polar, or near-polar flight!

Radaway

A balanced, personal perspective on the quantities and risks of radiation.

Note: There are a few missing images, as the editor seemed to flake out, keep an eye out for the links.

Explanation

Frequent flyers and flight crew often spend in excess of 20 hours per week in flight. This, along with the flight path they take and date, mean they are exposed to ionising radiation at higher/varying rates than the general population. But existing tools to check on radiation exposure are unwieldy and confusing to use, resulting in poor understanding and uptake. We propose an app to bridge this communication gap by both logging exposure easily, and expressing quantity and risk in easy to understand terms.

Summary

Initially we looked at the challenge in a more technical way- visualizing flight paths and radiation exposure, 3D representations, flight route optimization, solar storm warnings and the like. But we couldn't ignore the confusing mess of graphs in front of us! How is the average person going to quickly understand their level of risk from this?

We took a step back and decided to look at it from the perspective of the public, choosing the most regularly exposed groups- air crew and frequent flyers. Sure, we could make something that gives them a number, but so what? How are they going to understand that in relation to other sources of radiation they are exposed to, and what's the increase in risk?

We set up phone interviews with 5 senior flight crew (>30 years service), a frequent flier and a risk analyst in the airline industry.

Insights from interviews

Specifics regarding airline policy, flight crew awareness, processes regarding radiation dosage quotas etc were uncovered. The salient points:

The airline just gives a number to the flight crew
The flight crew know that when they hit their action limit (6 micro Sievert) they may need to adjust rosters
They generally check it once or twice a year, but apart from the relationship with their quota they have no further understanding of it
Flight crew generally know that some routes increase their exposure compare to others
Flight crew and Frequent Fliers are often more concerned with the radiation from full body scanners in security than radiation from a flight
Passengers never ask about radiation exposure
Flight crew do think twice about flying a lot if pregnant
When pregnant, a woman's radiation action limit is reduced to the level of the general public, as the unborn baby is considered the general public
Flight crew sometimes wonder if the radiation exposure over their entire career is something to worry about

For full documentation of our UX process, check out Moses' blog post:

https://medium.com/@mosesandersonong/nasa-space-ap...

And now we know who Marissa Musk is:

With these insights in mind how can we keep track of ionising radiation exposure in an easy to check way, but also relate it to exposure from other sources and the increased risk? After all, what good is a number without a sense of proportionality and perspective? This is information could inform future decisions by both these people and airlines.

How it works - Quantifying Exposure

The first step is data input, but entering flights isn't a priority on a Sunday afternoon or 15 minutes after you land. So we propose to enter an email/frequent fliers/ERP login to automatically track this, with a manual fallback. Likewise, a GPS/location service change on a global scale within a day could prompt a quick question and flight choice. Once the data is entered the appropriate past radiation data can be computed and pulled in. Future flight dates (if Marissa wants to see how much of an impact it would have) can also be explored.

We'd love to post this image here, but the editor seems to be uncooperative, please click this link for a visual of the app workflow:

http://imgur.com/Bdz5Gqn

And now we have the radiation exposure per flight, and monhly/yearly cumulative. But, it's still just a number.

Apples to Bananas:

Note that we couldn't paste in an updated image, for the LATEST version click this link:

http://imgur.com/TpJanh0

Older version that we'll leave here for now:

Remember that security gate Marissa was nervous about? She'd need to go through it over 16,000 times to exceed her current monthly flight exposure. Or on the flipside- if she got a chest CT scan that would be 7000 micro Sieverts!

Quantifying Risk

Mortality from low doses of ionising radiation exposure follows a linear relationship via the LNT model. Compared to the general public which have a yearly background radiation exposure of approx 3 milli Sieverts, flight staff often add another 3 or 4 of Cosmic Radiation, bringing their total to approx 6 milli Sieverts. This doubles their risk of mortality from ionising radiation.

Putting that into perspective, using the LNT model the mortality rate adds up to about 1% (cause of death) if you aren't crew. If you ARE crew and have a 30 year career it's now 2% (refer to the BEIR IIV stage 2 report). Sure, an increase of 100% sounds like a lot, but in the context of the other leading causes of death Marissa shouldn't panic:

But what if you showed that increase in mortal risk compared to the flu? Or the risk that radiation from THIS flight is greater or smaller than the plane crashing? Again, another fantastic opportunity for expressing proportionality and we wish we had more time to validate the data and express it in a UI!

Opportunities

We considered where this could go… On the health side of things, maybe the app could integrate with wearables to suggest how far to run to offset the increased risk in mortality. On the airline side they could soften their brand image by showing they not only cared, but managed the issue of radiation exposure. Operationally they would also find more engagement with staff that need to be aware of how exposure affects rosters.