Skaal | DisasterStream

Introduction

A platform that allows data exchange between civilians and military, facilitating organisation and helping to identify at risk locations of critical infrastructure as well as preventing further damage during environmental or man made disasters.

• Informing residents of affected areas whether they need to evacuate
• Contingency plan.
• Identifying at risk territories
• Providing a platform to organise volunteer assistance to emergency services
• Providing more detailed information about events in a centralised manner
• Upon request providing live intelligence from areas
• Having a central platform to request materiel from local sources

The platform can be swiftly configured to facilitate the specific ongoing crisis event. For example if a flood is happening, users would require to know where are the flooded zones and where it will be flooded in a certain amount of time, however during this event it it unnecessary to browse heat maps, that could be useful in other events, like forrest fires.

Protecting critical infrastructure

While this product wouldn't necessarily predict various catastrophic events, it does provide response units and institutions with resources to rapidly organise the masses and  allow for response to prevent further damage to various critical objects

Examples might include:

1. During a flood gathering local manpower and resources for building up a protective wall to the local electricity substation
2. Identify risk areas
3. Live assistance to manpower

How this would be used?

Imagine a crisis event is taking place. There are thousands people affected, many are stranded and in need of assistance. Emergency services are overloaded and working over their capacity.

While there are many volunteers ready to help, it is difficult to assess what they can offer, where they need to gather, what they need to bring along etc.

Within first hours the DisasterStream platform is configured for the event taking place. It is made public and all the necessary information is conveyed via mass media.

Due to information being centralised everyone can rely on single platform to coordinate their response and leverage volunteer capabilities more efficiently.

How is satellite data utilised?

As the crisis develops involved persons need to identify where are the dangerous areas they need to rapidly evacuate or avoid during their escape. Satellites provide useful data about the location and live updates about impacted areas. Different data provided can assist durind different events, for example:

• Water level maps during floods
• Temperature maps during forrest fires
• Wind direction during airborne threats

This is used to identify current risk zones as well as predict affected areas in the future.

Business Case

Product is not made for commercial purposes, rather product is made to prevent chaotic behaviour and have an action plan for natural disasters or military threat event. 

• App can be accessed by any NATO alliance member
• Collaboration with space and ground tech
• Cost saving for military force due more accurate data flow (Measure appropriate amount of man power)

Potential Blockers

Some of the main issues we see that might make it difficult to implement the app might be:

• Lack of connectivity in disaster affected areas due to infrastructure damage
• Server issues, as the service will have very few users most of the time, while during the event it will drastically increase
• Government Bureaucracy
• Data flows (Having Multiple data sources)
• Financing

Our Team

Ilja  - Team lead and product owner, expertise in business management, networking

Valerijs - UX/UI designer, our visual effect specialist

Oskars - UX / Research, tests product viability to audience, challanges product features

Alberts - Developer, skilled in building service apps, as well as our advisor for military use cases due to background in air force

Tatjana - Frontend developer and expert at structuring database