In order to provide a solution, we are going to develop a web-based application that will track food supply chains and keep records in the cloud-based database so that it will be accessible across the globe. Starting from the origin of food our application will keep following it based on the data provided by the global positioning system and notify suppliers whether the following route is risky or not? If any food is crossing the containment zone, our system will notify government bodies so that they can sanitize food properly. The end distributors will be one of the actors in our system and end buyers will be able to find the travel history of food also whether food is properly sanitized or not.
Based on the data provided by the application, the government will be able to decide whether any particular food processing unit is under high risk not. If the government found that the unit is under high risk then they can quarantine it and sanitize processed food before distributing it to end buyers.
What inspired our team to choose this challenge?
Our team members belong to the south Asian region specifically from India where we are living with 1.3 billion people. Due to nationwide lockdown many food processing and producing factories get affected, due to large populations, we can’t stop the food supply chain for a long time. We must have to keep this chain running with proper precautions to fulfill the large demand of the market.
What will be our approach to developing this project?
We will develop a web-based application that will notify government authorities through email or SMS whenever any food passes through the containment zone. Also, the application will keep the record of sanitization of food products. In our database, we will keep the records of food distributors so that end buyers can check the past traveling history of food which is available at that place and they can check whether food is properly sanitized or not.
How did you use space agency data in your project?
We will take the help of space agencies to track food throughout its supply chain. Based on its real-time location system will keep updating related government authorities.
What tools, coding languages, hardware, the software did you use to develop your project?
We are going to develop REST APIs in PHP where we will use a well known MVC framework ‘Laravel’. To store the data we are going to use MySQL which has large support across all platforms. Initially, our product will be web-based but with REST APIs we can develop mobile applications in the next phases as well. However, our web application will be mobile friendly and compatible with smartphones. To send Emails and SMS we will use the services provided by Twilio. Our application will be hosted on the AWS cloud platform where we can easily scale up or scale down servers based on the requirement by monitoring real-time server usage and number of requests.
What problems and achievements did your team have?
The team members had worked upon various technologies and had been awarded at national & International platforms for our research and innovation in technologies. We had a huge experience at the platform of COVID19 Challenge - MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology ) and worked with collaboration of international researchers in a team from USA, Taiwan, Africa for technology, and developed innovative solution upon pharmaceutical process and development. Our members had been awarded the “Incredible Junior Scientist Award” in 2017, 2 times Consolation award from “Plasma Research Centre'' in 2016 & 2018. Gold & Silver Medals from “Science Society of India'' INSEF- IISER Pune. Best innovative awards from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT- Gandhinagar), IIT Bhuvaneshwar, and many other achievements from IRIS (initiative for Research & Innovation in Science), NCSC, GCERT and many more. Also, our team member did an internship on “Applied Machine Learning and Data Science” from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT- Kanpur). Our member was offered by SL Technologies India for parallel work on my technology development of a Nanotechnology based water filtration plant. Our member has been awarded from "Indian International Science Festival '' for Nav Bharat Nirman and SEMC. Also the incumbent minister at the Ministry of Science & Technology, Government Of INDIA, Dr. Harsh Vardhan ji visited our innovation and research work and praised it.
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/152PalqpRGgyyCBI2ns8xDN7Imqe-IZmwAGx1cQUthG0/edit?usp=sharing
Reminder: you can use any open data you'd like. However, to be eligible for global judging, you must also use data from NASA and/or one of NASA's partner agencies for the Space Apps COVID-19 Challenge (ESA, JAXA, CSA, CNES...)