{"id":72553,"date":"2018-10-25T11:01:22","date_gmt":"2018-10-25T16:01:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/?p=72553"},"modified":"2018-10-26T08:38:08","modified_gmt":"2018-10-26T13:38:08","slug":"chicago-area-students-part-of-winning-codeathon-team-with-proposal-to-coordinate-disaster-relief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/chicago-area-students-part-of-winning-codeathon-team-with-proposal-to-coordinate-disaster-relief\/","title":{"rendered":"Chicago area students part of winning Codeathon team with disaster relief prototype"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Xiaoyi Liu<\/strong>
\nMedill Reports<\/em><\/p>\n

Natural disasters are 25 times more likely to impact people in\u00a0 Southeast Asia\u00a0<\/a> than those in Europe or North America due to global climate change and surging populations in urban areas.<\/p>\n

This is why students in a partnership that included Northwestern University, the University of Chicago and the Illinois Institute of Technology designed the digital prototype BAO to help provide relief and coordination for flood and storm-related disasters in Southeast Asia.<\/p>\n

BAO,\u00a0 the acronym of \u201cBasic Aid Outreach,\u201d took the Code for Impact Winners top award as\u00a0 part of the\u00a02018 Clinton Foundation Codeathon competition. Codeathon\u00a0 judges announced the winner Friday at the University of Chicago. Students f rom Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, Ashesi University in Ghana and University of Georgia also helped develop the collaborative tool as part of the BAO team.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe application of this is to deal with natural disasters which are not exclusively caused by climate change but are certainly worsened by climate change,\u201d said BAO team member Dylan Kennedy, a junior in Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The BAO team members knew that they wanted the project name to be a single syllable, making it easy to remember and easy to pronounce. Then they started to throw out random words until they felt like they had something with significant meaning.<\/p>\n

BAO received continued mentorship from IBM as part of the top award. The project completed against five other finalists.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reason we ultimately settled on BAO was for the dual meaning it can have…in Mandarin Chinese – baozi, what is often seen as a comfort and family-oriented food, and baobei, a term of endearment,\u201d said team member Alice Dong, a Swarthmore senior studying mathematics and economics. \u201cAs such, we felt like the project name was able to provide feelings of comfort and familiarity while being easy to pronounce.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The
The logo of BAO was inspired by the Chinese word \u201cbaozi,\u201d meaning a family-oriented food (Photo: BAO Team).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

BAO aims to provide preparation, response, and recovery resources to victims of natural disasters in Southeast Asia and empowers local volunteers and agencies to take the lead in delivering aid. The platform leverages existing social networks, the power of AI, and crowd-sourced data to coordinate relief efforts efficiently and accurately.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a program that would work through social media such as Facebook’s Messenger and WhatsApp. Anyone with those applications already installed on a cell phone would just need to find the relevant page and start messaging with it to get information.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne thing that we discovered was the particularly high social media use in Southeast Asia,\u201d Kennedy said. Their group figured out that by integrating BAO with platforms that people have already familiar and comfortable with, it would be able to reach a wider audience than if it were an app.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt seems like one small step to finally decide to work on an already established platform like Messenger, but in reality it took what was probably hours to make that final step,\u201d Dong said.<\/p>\n

\"One
One of the key challenges in disaster relief is coordinating across the multiple parties involved: local volunteers, local governments, international agencies, and individuals. To address this, BAO designed a cloud-based dashboard for individuals to log activities and report item usage. (BAO Team)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This year\u2019s Codeathon challenged students to develop over the course of two days digital tools that can increase the effectiveness of response and recovery efforts following natural disasters. They worked in teams and then pitched their projects to a panel of expert judges.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter presenting, I felt a surge of pride,\u201d Kennedy said. \u201cJust stepping down from the stage, being like we did it, we gave a good presentation, we gave a good pitch. This is a great idea.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kennedy switched his major from civil engineering to computer science after he was convinced that the wide-reaching tools and applications in computer science allow him to better help people. \u201cIt had a goal and focus that was completely in line with the kind of things I wanted to do,\u201d said Kennedy, referring to the Codeathon. He figured that he had to apply since the mission of Codeathon matched the reason why he switched to computer science.<\/p>\n

According to Kennedy, a huge part of figuring out what he and his teammates wanted to create with their digital prototype was to empathize and try to put themselves in a situation where people\u00a0 afflicted by the natural disasters could get help quickly.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat whole thing can push you in a different direction to view problems differently, and think about how can this help, how can this make the world a better place?\u201d Kennedy said.<\/p>\n

Kennedy saw the BAO team as one of the most balanced ones he had ever participated in. \u201cYou can\u2019t trace the idea to any one person,\u201d he said. \u201cWe wanted to make sure everyone was involved and everyone made their slides that they were talking about.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dong, agreed. \u201cSomething else I realized as the Codeathon drew to a close was how important the team mattered,\u201d she recalled. \u201cWe had both great chemistry and balance in that whenever some of us were becoming too serious there was always someone else to crack us up or remind us that ultimately we were there to have fun and enjoy ourselves,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Bob Lord, one of the judges and chief digital officer of IBM, announced the winner Friday and said that insightful digital applications gave BAO the edge to win first place.<\/p>\n

\u201cYour application is scalable for wherever it may be needed,\u201d Lord said. \u201cWe are never gonna stop these natural disasters from happening around the world, but if we can give first responders better information, like you are proposing with BAO, they can actually make better decisions and therefore they can actually save lives because they are making better decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n

The BAO team discussed the future of their digital prototype after winning the prize. \u201cWhile I’m sure most of us would love to continue the project, realistically we are all incredibly spread out and the chances of a collaborative future effort are near impossible,\u201d Dong said. \u201cHowever, should any of us want to continue on the project, I’m sure the rest of us would greatly support the effort whether as part of the team or as an observer.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Clinton Global Initiative University and other sponsors hosted the Codeathon and honored the team at a ceremony Saturday at the University of Chicago.<\/p>\n

Photo at top: A multi-university proposal to coordinate disaster relief for communities in Southeast Asia won the Clinton Foundation Codeathon at Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U) on Friday. Team members (l to r) Dylan Kennedy from Northwestern University, Winshen Liu from University of Chicago, Alice Dong from Swarthmore College, Constant Likudie from Ashesi University and Vien Yadavongsy from the Illinois Institute of Technology\u00a0 took a bow at CGI U 2018 closing plenary session, hosted at the University of Chicago. Team member Samuel Tingle from University of Georgia was absent. (Xiaoyi Liu\/MEDILL)<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Xiaoyi Liu Medill Reports Natural disasters are 25 times more likely to impact people in\u00a0 Southeast Asia\u00a0 than those in Europe or North America due to global climate change and surging populations in urban areas. This is why students in a partnership that included Northwestern University, the University of Chicago and the Illinois Institute […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":504,"featured_media":72561,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[452,4447,28,29,2951,675],"tags":[192],"class_list":["post-72553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beyond-chicago","category-fall-2018","category-general-interest","category-health-and-science","category-politicsnational-security","category-social-justice","tag-promo"],"yoast_head":"\nChicago area students part of winning Codeathon team with disaster relief prototype - Medill Reports Chicago<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/chicago-area-students-part-of-winning-codeathon-team-with-proposal-to-coordinate-disaster-relief\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Chicago area students part of winning Codeathon team with disaster relief prototype - Medill Reports Chicago\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Xiaoyi Liu Medill Reports Natural disasters are 25 times more likely to impact people in\u00a0 Southeast Asia\u00a0 than those in Europe or North America due to global climate change and surging populations in urban areas. 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