A fleet of rubber ducks with WiFi to save lives after a flood

A team of developers has tested a Wi-Fi network connected by rubber ducks that can be useful in case of floods caused by a hurricane, so the Owl project, which won the Call for Code challenge in 2018 , begins to show that the ingenious idea can work to save lives.

The Owl Project was designed to be deployed in case of lost communications during a natural disaster. terrible images of the devastation in Puerto Rico after the passage of Hurricane Maria, prompted a team of developers to think about contributing a solution that would facilitate the rescue efforts.

The Owl Project uses dozens of WiFi devices integrated in rubber ducks, of which we use in the bathtub, to form a network of connection points, called «ClusterDuck», which allows to recover access to the Internet after a natural disaster.

Image of IBM

The network of rubber ducks It allows emergency services to manage a disaster, coordinate resources, learn about weather patterns and obtain analytical data information through the cloud.The solution is based on the latest APIs of IBM Watson Studio, Watson Cloud and Weather Company, all of them integrated into IBM Cloud.

As explained in The Next Web, emergency response teams are equipped with long-range portable communication devices during natural disasters, but victims are left without access to communications, which is especially serious when You are looking for help or shelter.Hence the idea of creating a network based on waterproof rubber devices designed to leave unscathed in the toughest conditions, and float in waterlogged areas after a hurricane.

A fleet of rubber ducks with WiFi to save lives after a flood

voice assistant to save life

People within the perimeter of the "ClusterDuck" network will receive an alert on their devices with instructions on how to connect to the "papa duck" software, hosted in the cloud, that will offer victim assistance and response to your questions, through a voice assistant, so they can get out of the trance.

Meteorological data is an essential part of the application, which offers the possibility of asking questions such as "in which direction is the nearest tropical storm heading?" or "what conditions are expected tomorrow night?" This information is key after the flood caused by a hurricane.

"In the worst disasters, chaos and misinformation extend," explains Bryan Knouse, one of the developers of this idea."With better information and better analysis, you can get the necessary resources in the places that need it most. This kind of efficiency can have an extraordinary impact on the number of people that can be saved in the event of a disaster ».

Although the first tests, which have been carried out in Puerto Rico, have taken place on a network of only one kilometer in length that can be covered with five ducklings, the team is confident that the technology can be scaled to cover an area 100 times larger.

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