The project deals with the trajectory of food from market to dish. In times of pandemic, people avoid going out for shopping, especially those who are in risk groups. In this scenery, analyzing the most affected areas by the virus, through spatial imaging (NASA) or demographic data (WHO), the main role of urban centers with larger population densities is notable during the outbreak - the main hot spots of the disease. This way, how could we avoid agglomerations where there are so many people, which will always have survival needs, such as food and medicine?
With these issues in mind, the app “Need Something?” came up as a tool to avoid unnecessary and excessive exposure. The project is based on the idea that buildings and condos can adopt the app, through the supervision of a local manager, chosen by the community. After that, neighbors may enter the free platform.
If anyone is going to the grocery store, the person can access the app and see if anybody else wants some items. Looking the other way around, if there is a person, who belongs to the risk groups or not, that needs something, she can add items on the app and, this way, won’t need to leave her house. We emphasize that the protection and hygiene measures should continue, such as avoiding proximity, always using the sanitizers and cleaning the groceries and products.
Inspiration: One of the reasons that has inspired the project was the creation of an application to develop better environments in the communities and humanity, performing acts of kindness among neighbors, especially in times of isolation.
Development and data resources
The first approach was looking at some NASA data to get information on the areas with more cases of Covid-19 in Brazil. Using density population and the light’s night of the Earth, it was possible to observe that the surrounds of these cities are constituted by buildings. Another data resource that expresses possible impacts of the project was the CO2 levels, on regions with more buildings these levels are higher and, with the use of the app, less people will drive around to buy groceries and medicines, reducing them.
After the first mockup of the app was finished, a research was done via google forms with people from Curitiba, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and other places from Brazil, and we got more than 200 responses. Reading and analyzing all the feedback and suggestions, the mockup was enhanced. The idea got more than 80% of acceptance, on the research.
So, having these information, and adding with other’s scientifics research papers that we found, the idea was to create a tool to avoid agglomerations, unnecessary exposure and, this way, would be a tool to help decrease the contagion and spread of the disease, at the same time making it possible to develop charity and fraternity among neighbors, and even reducing CO2 emission.
Tools:To see georeferenced images of NASA was used python and gdal library. The interface of the app was done on the website Figma, using HTML and CSS. For the acceptance research we used Google Forms.
Problems and achievements: In the beginning, we struggled because the team wanted to help everybody and there were a lot of bad consequences of the pandemic and it was hard to select which one to focus. Another problem was to know how to express all the thoughts the team had about the project in just a few seconds. An achievement was that it was possible to analyse the pandemic and its consequences with more data and information, we had a better understanding of the full picture, we could see what is happening not only in Brazil, but in the whole world.
Future Plans: This kind of change could continue even after the end of the pandemic. In the future, with large-scale use of the app, we could study the reduction of gas consumption, pollution and specially the CO2 emission, from the NASA data, in the cities where the app gets good adherence.
Since the items per buyer would increase among Need Something? users , we plan to reach out to local commercials and managers - some of which have already shown interest during informal conversations held during the ideation process - in creating discounts for such customers.
We also aim to incentive a local monthly ranking system, to stimulate the adherence to the platform. Another idea involved a collaboration between collaborators - such as being able to launch warnings if a specific market is getting busy.
Besides that, instead of using an external payment system, we imagine creating a virtual token based on cryptocurrency technology (such as SLP or ERC-20) that could be used in order to avoid using external payment methods and reward high ranked users. As a second option, we could link the platform to facilitated payment methods, like Pay-Pal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veIypX6W5kc
Governamental(EUA), NASA. Black Marble - Nighttime Lights only (Annual, 2012 & 2016), available in: https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/NightLights. Acess in:30 May 2020.
Governamental(EUA), NASA. Population Density, 2020, available in: https://beta.sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/data/set/gpw-v4-population-count-adjusted-to-2015-unwpp-country-totals. Acess in: 30 May 2020.
Governamental (Brazil), NASA. Carbon Monoxide (L2, 500 hPa, Day), available in:https://airs.jpl.nasa.gov/. Acess in:30 May 2020.
Governamental(Brazil), Ministério da Saúde, available in: https://covid.saude.gov.br/. Acess in: 30 May 2020.