Purify the Air Supply

Has your time spent indoors increased during the COVID-19 pandemic as a result of stay-at-home and shelter-in-place policies worldwide? Your challenge is to use the International Space Station (ISS) as inspiration and develop a system to monitor and/or purify indoor air. It is entirely up to you whether the system you design is able to be used on Earth (for example in homes, businesses, transportation, etc.) and/or in space.

BrÆth

Summary

We are X Æ, a team of Engineering students that aim to create a counsciousness society through the impact generated by information. The WHO said, there are 4.2 million premature deaths annually caused by pollution. Our Project BrAEth is a system that gathers data from NASA to alert citizens through Push Noticifications about the low quality of the air and give suggestions to their current region, like wearing masks. We believe people will change their habits in order to maintain their health.

How We Addressed This Challenge

The solution fits strongly into this challenge, since its implementation attacks a root cause of the problem of air quality on the planet, which is the habit of people, as Charles Duhigg would say. Thus, a simple change will have consequences in the most diverse areas, in addition to improving the quality of the air we breathe. People and animals will have better health and disposition, quality of life will be improved, the environment will stop suffering, the ozone layer will suffer less impact and potential pandemics can be predicted and mitigated. All of this will become a reality from the implementation of this system that alerts people on their cell phones about the air conditions and recommendations on how to proceed, gaining the same space that most people's morning weather apps have.

How We Developed This Project

Our team was inspired by the historical moment we are living in, that drew attention to people with breathing problems. In addition to that, we considered an increase in people's awareness to preserve the environment. To approach the problem, we needed some ideas, so we brainstormed and used the Crazy8 methodology. This led us to develop the project idea. In order to have this project working, we will use the data available by space agencies along with Oracle services to store and process data.  As they are data with a low level of relationships, a non-relational database (Oracle NoSQL Database) could be used. This data will be requested from the database (DB) and then processed by a Python Script. This script, which runs on an Oracle VM, will be responsible for checking if there are regions that present any disturbance in the air quality and if these areas have permanent populations. If both cases occur, a notification will be sent to local authorities and sent back to all inhabitants' cell phones through a system similar to the one already in place for warnings of storms in Brazil or earthquakes in Japan. We had some problems with time, mainly trying to find a way to reach as many people as possible with our solution.

Project Demo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAlPhPDCMKY&feature=youtu.be

Data & Resources

Date available by NASA, NASA Giovanni, NASA Power, Oracle NoSQL Database.

Tags
#airquality, #software, #habits, #health, #healthcare,
Global Judging
This project was submitted for consideration during the Space Apps Global Judging process.