{"id":480,"date":"2016-01-21T15:59:27","date_gmt":"2016-01-21T15:59:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.met.reading.ac.uk\/flooding\/?p=480"},"modified":"2021-07-26T10:08:21","modified_gmt":"2021-07-26T09:08:21","slug":"sinatra-researcher-hacked-the-glofas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/flooding\/sinatra-researcher-hacked-the-glofas\/","title":{"rendered":"SINATRA Researcher hacked the GloFAS"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
\"download\"<\/a><\/td>\nBy Dr. Albert Chen (University of Exeter)<\/em>
\n21st January 2016<\/em><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

The FFIR-SINATRA<\/a> Researcher Dr Albert Chen<\/a> at the Centre for Water Systems (CWS)<\/a>,<\/span> University of Exeter<\/a>, has participated in FloodHack<\/a> and won the First Winner Prize.<\/p>\n

The FloodHack<\/a> was a hackathon event on Global Flood Awareness System (GloFAS)<\/a> held on 16 and 17 January 2016 at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF)<\/a> in Reading, UK. It was organised by the ECMWF<\/a>, supported by the Copernicus Emergency Management Service Program<\/a>, to look for innovative solutions to overcome the existing challenges that GloFAS<\/a> is facing. 40+ participants with a wide range of backgrounds (education, computer science, physics, hydrology, geography, etc.) attended the FloodHack<\/a> event and formed five teams to develop the solutions.<\/p>\n

\"pic1\"<\/a>(Photo courtesy: Silke Zollinger<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Dr Chen<\/a> teamed up with three Software Developers, Miss Laura Ludwinski<\/a>, Mr Sam Griffiths<\/a> and Mr Paul Barnard from JBA Consulting<\/a>, the Physicist Dr Peter Watson from Oxford University<\/a>, and the Hydrologist Dr Li-Pen Wang<\/a> from KU Leuven<\/a>.<\/p>\n

They developed the software LIVE (Logistic and Infrastructure Visual Evaluation)<\/a> to summarise the detailed flood forecasting information from the GloFAS<\/a> into a \u2018Time to respond\u2019 map that allows the decision makers having better understanding of available time to act for flood mitigation. The LIVE<\/a> can also help prioritise the resources allocation so the areas with the most urgent flood threat will receive immediate attention.<\/p>\n

<\/a>(Photo courtesy: Florian Rathgeber<\/a>)<\/p>\n

The objective and the workflow were determined in the first round of group discussion. Therefore, each member of the team LIVE<\/a> contributed individual\u2019s skills and knowledge to complete the subtasks, including information collection and extraction, data processing and analysis, and visualisation. Python <\/a>scripts and the QGIS<\/a> were the main tools the team\u00a0LIVE<\/a> adopted to develop the solution. After 27 hours of intense collaboration and countless cups of coffee and Redbull, a prototype of LIVE<\/a> was completed.<\/p>\n

The outcome of each team was presented to all participants in the afternoon of the second day, and judged by a panel consisted of professional software developer, telecoms expert, environment and technology consultant, web technologist, and crisis manager. The judging criteria<\/a> included (1) potential for innovation (2) relevance\/usefulness (3) technical merit (4) design\/user (5) experience\/polish and (6) “wow” factor.<\/p>\n

Five projects were presented, including<\/p>\n