It’s an intractable problem during natural disasters: telecommunications networks and power grids are often damaged or overwhelmed; without them, first responders struggle to help survivors, coordinate evacuations, and even count the dead. Project Owl proposes an elegant solution: an AI-powered disaster coordination platform paired with a robust communication network that can reach people even when other connections are down. … The “clusterduck” is a buoy with internet-of-things-type low-frequency connectivity that could form an ad-hoc communication network in areas hit hard by natural disaster.
Now Project Owl has won IBM’s first ever Call for Code contest, which challenged developers across the world to build disaster relief technology using IBM and open-source software. More than 100,000 developers from 156 countries participated in the contest. A panel of judges including former President Bill Clinton selected Project Owl from a field of five finalists whose solutions ranged from using AI to speed up the rebuilding process after an earthquake to feeding firefighters live data during wildfires via sensors.
In fact, the top 10 finalists will all have their projects officially sanctioned by the Linux Foundation.
Read more at Wired
