We chose this challenge because we saw in it an opportunity to work on solving a global problem that may be more important than any economic consequences. This challenge requires us to focus on a specific stage in the food journey from the seed to the stomach, so after dividing those stages into several sub-stages, we found that the major problem lies in the distribution stage. Everyone has noticed the constant discharge of stores of important products due to the panic among the public caused by the spread of the disease and its consequences on our daily life. That wrong thinking led to these selfish behaviors, because, simply, not all citizens can purchase products that will satisfy their critical needs. Moreover, the disease has negatively affected the financial capabilities of many groups due to their expulsion from their work, reduced wages, or even a heavy loss in their projects directly caused by the epidemic. For example, retail and food sales in the U.S. fell 8.7% in March from February to their lowest levels in 2.5 years, according to Census Bureau data from April 15. It’s the biggest one-month drop ever recorded in the U.S.
Here we are not talking about a hypothetical event, but this is a recurring story in many cities around the world and has clear implications. Also, let's not forget that there are basic problems in production due to the obstacles that the disease directly caused in the process of planting, fishing, and manufacturing of various basic products. After we collect all these factors, we can notice the dangerous consequences of this problem and its catastrophic effects, which may turn the medical crisis into a food crisis. Already, 135 million people had been facing acute food shortages, but now with the pandemic, 130 million more could go hungry in 2020, said Arif Husain, chief economist at the World Food Program, a United Nations agency.
Do you think the problem suddenly appeared? It is the accumulation of many of the previous decisions to start the spread of the virus, which caused the weak health organization in general and mishandling the virus in particular. From the late decisions of the home stone to the gross failure in the health system, the world reached the brink of collapse. This failure led to fear (justified) by many in the public, and therefore there was an acceleration in storing what can be stored and added to this the weak purchasing power of most of the population. This will bring us to this darker final picture.
After analyzing all of this, our team concludes that the main problem is that there is no clear mechanism for equitable distribution of products to everyone, and also because many people are unaware of the seriousness of their actions. So to solve this important point, our project is based on providing data for everyone about the appropriate share for each individual, which will suffice for an appropriate period without taking the right of others through using the official databases and statistics in addition to the blockchain system.
This idea solves the problem directly because first, it provides a clear mechanism for distribution based on official data and specialized international statistics. Secondly, the project provides each individual with a clear definition of their share of the products to eliminate the problem of ignorance of many individuals with the appropriate share they need and thirdly, make that mechanism simple and Available to everyone and it will be provided with all resources to create mutual trust between us and users.
The use of the blockchain system offered by IBM, which is a new system for storing information. They have already announced its use in the process of tracking the food path. The system is based on storing the information in the form of a block that contains the main information, and then when you want to add new information or even modify old information, you must put a new block. This system we decided to use to track the course of the food as each step is stored in a special block and that will allow us to get the full picture and thus determine the best decisions that individuals must make to go through this crisis safely.
"Covid-19 has officially become a global pandemic" The release of this sentence from the World Health Organization was the first indication of what will cause the disease. But will it be a humanitarian disaster as well? Personally, I did not know the answer to this question until I saw that lady, who was standing at the pharmacy and seemed to be showing signs of exhaustion. She was looking for insulin injections for her diabetic mother. She said that she had been searching for hours for those injections, but it seemed that people started buying in bulk, which quickly emptied the market. "Officially, this pandemic has made us lose the most important thing we have. We will lose our humanity," I said in my head after seeing this situation.
We chose this challenge for several reasons, the most important of which are our clear visions of its implications for our local community, because of the many stories associated with it which are published on social media and the availability of data in this challenge.
Our primary goal is to provide a clear mechanism that allows the public to know the seriousness of this problem and to provide them with the appropriate information to know the food they need. In addition to making that project easy and available to all. Our vision is that: Knowing the impact of your actions on others is the beginning of the "social solidarity" necessary to pass safely from this crisis.
For this research, they used several tools, including 1- Search engines and official data available on the Internet, such as government data and international organizations such as the United Nations, the World Health Organization and the World Food Organization 2- Photoshop was used as a primary temple for the application design. Our first temples were made using it. 3- NASA and other space organizations data was used as the main source for information about the Earth maps which is related to agriculture and transportation. Furthermore, we used the data which is related to people's movement to analyze the people's reaction to the pandemic. 4- Thunkable was used to build our application because of its easy-to-use interface and the infinite option for the design. 5- Google drive was our main connection bridge because it was used in the process of sharing data between team members.
We have faced many problems during the implementation of the project, perhaps the most important of which is the lack of ideas available to us that do not need government implementation due to the restrictions imposed by the pandemic and because of the difficulty in communicating with governments to present these ideas to officials. Also, we have faced the problem of the difficulty of programming a ready-made page to represent the project in a timely manner, which led to our need for the use of rapid design sites to provide the initial form of the project. Finally, although it is a global problem, however, communication via the Internet had many problems, including the weakness of the Internet among many members, which led to continuous interruptions in meetings in addition to the difficulty of continuous communication between members, and this was added to the difficulty of working as a team and the distribution and roles of discussions.
In addition to those problems, there was a major problem and the reason for it was that we took a difficult path, which is the use of the blockchain system. In fond of the quality of that system and its tremendous ability to store information and arrange it in an organized form so that it is easy to track the course of the food, it is still a new system that has not been tried a lot and this made the problems that we faced difficult to solve.
All of these problems we faced with determination and passion to reach the best possible project and to turn it from an idea in words to a real project with an impact on the ground and an opportunity to reach one of the most important problems associated with the global epidemic.
Although we faced many problems, we have accomplished many things, the most important of which is the experience that we gained from teamwork and the use of research methods and scientific thinking in implementing a real project on the ground. In addition, we have become a principal application that we can develop into a real project that serves the public.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AOwFy5cv0zmc0CgYQXslqCip2_tRSdxP/view?usp=sharing
NASA Data: Land Data Assimilation System: https://ldas.gsfc.nasa.gov/
was used observing agriculture field maps to be used in the tracking process.
Euro data cube services for COVID-19 space apps challenge: https://www.sentinel-hub.com/edc-covid19/
Gave us the opportunity to access to the Earth Observation rapid prototyping environment, including access to various EO open data sources.
FAO: http://www.fao.org/2019-ncov/q-and-a/impact-on-food-and-agriculture/en/
Was used as a data source for the people's reaction to the pandemic