NEW YORK, Oct. 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- The winner of the
Call for Code 2019 Global Challenge was announced today: A system
that uses artificial intelligence and the internet of things to
guard the safety of firefighters as they battle blazes.
The winning project, Prometeo, submitted by a team from
Barcelona, was announced by the
competition's Founding Partner, IBM (NYSE: IBM), and Creator, David
Clark Cause, during a celebration at the United Nations Delegates
Dining Room in New York City.
The Prometeo team, which includes a nurse, a firefighter and
software developers, will receive the Call for Code grand prize of
USD $200,000.
Through IBM's $25 million Code and
Response initiative that fosters the creation and deployment of
open source technologies to help solve some of society's most
pressing challenges, the team will receive deployment support from
IBM, The Linux Foundation, and other partners interested in scaling
their solution. As part of the program, Prometeo will also be
further developed and deployed via the IBM Corporate Service Corps
in communities in greatest need.
Call for Code is a $30 million,
five-year global initiative which, together with Charitable Partner
United Nations Human Rights, has become one of the largest and most
ambitious efforts bringing together start-up, academic, and
enterprise developers to address pressing societal issues. Building
on last year's inaugural challenge, Call for Code 2019 focused on
creating solutions to help mitigate the impacts of natural
disasters and enable first responders to better support
survivors.
"Prometeo is an outstanding solution because it leverages the
real experiences of first responders and technologists who have
witnessed the human toll of wildfires," said Mami Mizutori, Special
Representative of the UN Secretary-General (SRSG) for Disaster Risk
Reduction. "In Europe so far this year, authorities have recorded
more than 2,000 wildfires, which is three times higher than average
over the past decade. It's more important than ever that we do
everything we can to protect firefighters, as they risk their lives
to protect us."
The Prometeo team is composed of veteran firefighter
Joan Herrera, emergency medical
nurse Vicenç Padró, and three developers and data scientists:
Salomé Valero, Josep Ràfols, and Marco
Rodriguez. Together they created a combination
hardware-software solution based on multiple IBM Cloud services.
The health device—which is about the size of a smartphone and
straps to a firefighter's arm—has multiple sensors that measure key
variables including temperature, humidity, and smoke concentration.
This information is collected and transmitted to IBM's Cloud IoT
platform. A Node-RED workflow then sends the data to the IBM
Watson-based machine learning model, which distills the information
into a simple color-coded status for fire command centers to
monitor the health of each deployed firefighter in real-time.
"We need to do something to help our firefighters," Valero said.
"For me, they are our heroes. They are putting their lives on the
line for us. My dream is to help them with Prometeo." Prometeo
stores the health information in an IBM Cloudant database,
providing an historical and comprehensive view of the data. Any
future client – such as authorized fire command centers tasked with
tracking firefighters in the field – can connect to the Prometeo
dashboard by simply using JavaScript and WebSockets.
More than 180,000 individuals from 165 nations participated in
Call for Code and Code and Response this year. They included
independent and enterprise developers, data scientists, activists,
and students. The teams used The Weather Company data and open
source-powered technology – including IBM Cloud, IBM Watson, and
IBM Blockchain – to create more than 5,000 applications to help
prepare for and mitigate the impact of natural disasters.
"The response for this year's Call for Code has been
overwhelming,'' said Bob Lord, IBM
Senior Vice President Cognitive Applications and Developer
Ecosystems. ''And simultaneously through Code and Response we are
solving societal challenges at scale by matching open source
technologies with IBM innovations like Watson, IBM Blockchain, Weather, and IoT. Last
year's winning solution, Project Owl, recently completed their most
significant technology deployment in areas of Puerto Rico that are still recovering from the
devastation of Hurricane Maria. A great solution like Project Owl,
born from the need in Puerto Rico,
will be made available through open source in places of need like
Osaka, Japan and Goa, India, to help save lives."
Over the past year Project Owl's two-part hardware-software
solution has been further enhanced, and the team is collaborating
with first responders, civilians, students, university
administrators, and government officials in Puerto Rico. Video highlights of the most
recent Project Owl deployment are available here.
"In recent weeks, we have seen devastating news coming from the
Bahamas as the true toll of
Hurricane Dorian comes to light. And even two years after
Hurricanes Irma and Maria, communities across the Caribbean are still recovering," said
President Clinton, who served as an eminent judge for this year's
challenge. "We know that we can use technology to reduce the
impacts of disasters, mobilize resources more quickly, and save
lives. This year, the Call for Code Global Challenge brought
together the best and brightest minds to improve disaster
preparedness and response."
The Call for Code Challenge's eminent judges include:
- Distinguished Judge: Bill
Clinton, Founder and Board Chair, Clinton Foundation and 42nd President of
the United States
- Stewart Butterfield, CEO and
co-founder of Slack
- Steve Ewell, Executive Director,
Consumer Technology Association Foundation
- Mariya Gabriel, European
Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society
- Kate Gilmore, United Nations
Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights
- Dr. Elizabeth Hausler, Founder
and CEO of Build Change
- Mami Mizutori, Special Representative of the UN
Secretary-General (SRSG) for Disaster Risk Reduction and head of
the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction
- Claudia Nemat, Member of the
Deutsche Telekom AG Board of Management, Technology and
Innovation
- Michelle Nunn, President and CEO
of CARE USA
- Tom Peck, Executive VP and Chief
Information and Digital Officer, Ingram Micro Inc.
- Trevor Riggen, Senior Vice
President, Disaster Cycle Services, American Red Cross
- Jim Zemlin, Executive Director,
The Linux Foundation
David Clark, Creator of the Call
for Code Global Initiative, said the competition was achieving its
purpose. "I'd like to thank our judges,'' Clark said. ''Call for
Code was formed to inspire and empower the 24 million developers
around the world to create tech solutions to solve some of the
toughest social challenges we face. Last year's Call for Code
Global Challenge was the largest engagement of developers in
history, and this year it has nearly doubled in size! We'd like to
thank everyone around the world who participated. It's this kind of
global effort that is going to create real change for the
better."
The five Call for Code 2019 Global Challenge finalist teams were
all recognized and honored at Saturday's event. In addition to
first-place finisher Prometeo:
- Second place was awarded to Sparrow—whose members hail from
India, China, and the US. The Sparrow team developed
an open source conversational AI platform that helps users address
their physical and psychological well-being during and after
natural disasters by matching them with automated support and live
experts. Sparrow was awarded USD $25,000.
- Third place awarded to Rove, an SMS chatbot that uses natural
language understanding to give users health information during a
natural disaster. Rove was awarded USD $25,000.
- Fourth place AsTeR was awarded USD $10,000.
- Fifth place Healios was awarded USD $10,000.
These solutions will also receive support from IBM and The Linux
Foundation to establish open source projects through Code and
Response. A summary of the top five finalist solutions can be read
here: https://developer.ibm.com/callforcode/projects/
For more information about Call for Code, visit
https://callforcode.org/
For information about the IBM Developer community, visit
https://developer.ibm.com/
For information about David Clark Cause, visit
https://davidclarkcause.com/
Media Contacts:
Mike Sefanov
650-281-8099
mike.sefanov@ibm.com
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SOURCE IBM