Space Apps Challenge 2017

Introduction

Landslides are one of the common hazard in hilly terrains causing massive damage to life and property. We came up with an app “Slides NearME” that transforms landslide data into understandable information for everyone . Our application combines observations send by the users, with NASA landslide data, to generate regularly updated landslide risk maps for an area. Thus, individuals and disaster managers will be better prepared to reduce landslide risk, and build a resilient community!

Explanation

1. “Slides NearME” an application that provides a desktop web-interface to disaster managers and a mobile-based interface to citizens.
2. The mobile interface allows the citizens to send observations and geo-tagged photos of occurrences such as cracks, leaning poles etc to a central server.
3. A predictor model for landslides occurrences that provides the overall landslide occurring zones in a country. It makes use of open-source data such as Digital Elevation models, NASA rainfall data (Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission - TRMM and global precipitation measurement - GPM), land cover maps from satellite image classification of Sentinel -2 data, National geological maps.
4. The central server (Web Processing Service) facilitates generation of a risk map on a web-application using the four layers: and slide prediction map from our predictor model, NASA Landslide Hazard Assessment for Situational Awareness (LHASA), Open Street map API and the crowd-sourced information from the local people.
5. The LHASA is weekly updated layer that shows the areas at risk after a particular rainfall event. This allows the disaster management team to narrow down the focus to potential landslide risk areas.
6. The end product of the app is the updated risk map which is more reliable to use.

Direct Stakeholders: The general public; living in landslide vulnerable areas and emergency management teams (local, national or international).

Potential Stakeholders: Government (Disaster Management Authority), United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR), International Consortium For Landslides (ICL), Asia Disaster Preparedness Center (ADPC) and academia.

Innovation: Integration of mobile and web-based desktop application for our target users, incorporating crowd-sourced observations and system generated updated landslide risk maps along with preparedness guidelines for the users.

Impact: The risk map benefits directly to the community and the emergency system with an overall impact guiding towards better preparedness and reduction of landslide risks.