Prometeo created a wearable device that measures carbon monoxide, smoke concentration, humidity and ... [+]
Developers like pizza and soda (it’s a necessary fuel base combo), but they also need a purpose. This reality is being reflected in the nature of the software coding challenges that we’re currently seeing staged around the globe. Code challenges, hackfests, hackathons and app creator contests used to (before the turn of the last millennium) run with fairly open remits i.e. developers were typically challenged to ‘build something amazing’, in whatever stream they felt the need to follow.
In 2020, a lot of people would agree that the planet needs more than just another Twitter, so coder challenges are now reflecting the Earth factor.
There are plenty of coder tournaments to choose from. Microsoft has its Imagine Cup, Salesforce has had its various Force.com cloud developer challenges, Oracle has its ‘Code Innovate’ hackfests as does SAP, ServiceNow and a host of the other big players. The open source community has another string of challenges, some of which are listed here by Freecodecamp’s Daniel Borowski. And then there’s IBM.
Call for Code
IBM’s work in the developer challenge space is known as Call for Code. Now in its third year, this is an initiative created in partnership with the United Nations Human Rights body and the Linux Foundation. The 2020 for Code Global Challenge coincides with the United Nation’s 75th anniversary and sets out to invite the world’s software developers to help fight climate change with open source-powered technology.
The fact that IBM is championing open source technologies is no doubt charged by the firm’s 2018 acquisition of Red Hat. Similarly, the fact that IBM is championing initiatives to address climate change is emboldened by the firm’s 2016 acquisition of The Weather Company. Add these factors to the pre-existing IBM stack and you can see why the company has highlighted a code challenge selection pack that includes Red Hat OpenShift, IBM Cloud, IBM Watson (for AI), IBM Blockchain and data from The Weather Company. The goal is to employ technology in new ways that can make an immediate and lasting humanitarian impact in communities around the world.
But do software developers really care about climate change? Aren’t they still more focused on pizza, soda and massively multiplayer online role-playing game gaming? An IBM study conducted by Morning Consult surveyed more than 3,000 developers, first responders and social activists across China, Columbia, Egypt, India, Japan, Spain, United Kingdom and the United States and found: 77% of first responders and developers surveyed agree with the statement 'climate change is the single most pressing issue facing my generation’.
Should we bring that (arguably somewhat loaded) statistic into question? That may be the first that time software developers have been questioned ‘alongside’ first responders and social activists. These three groups hang out together all the time do they? If it is a flaky statistic directed at a contrived group based upon a preloaded statement, then fine… what we can still takeaway is the fact that younger people across an even a seemingly artificial social cohort do all care about climate change. Let’s move on.
Natural disaster preparedness
Over 180,000 participants from 165 nations took part in Call for Code in 2019; they created more than 5,000 applications focused on natural disaster preparedness and relief. This year in 2020, Call for Code is challenging applicants to create innovations based on open source technologies to help halt and reverse the impact of climate change.
“There is an urgent need to take action against climate change and IBM is uniquely positioned to connect leading humanitarian experts with the most talented and passionate developers around the world,” said Bob Lord, IBM senior vice president of cognitive applications and developer ecosystems. “IBM is determined to identify, deploy and scale technology solutions that can help save lives, empower people and create a better world for future generations.”
Lord noted that IBM has been mobilizing throughout the company, from policy commitments on climate, to IBM’s weather forecasting capabilities powered by AI and supercomputers. Special representative of the United Nations Secretary-General (SRSG) for disaster risk reduction Mami Mizutori reflected Lord’s comments by saying that climate change is the most critical issue of our time — with a multitude of localized contributing factors and cascading effects that cannot be solved by a single organization — so, therefore, we (the planet) need a global network to fight this together.
The Prometeo firefighter safety device.
Last year’s Call for Code global challenge winning team Prometeo created a wearable device that measures carbon monoxide, smoke concentration, humidity and temperature to monitor firefighter safety in real-time as well as to help improve their health outcomes in the long term.
The solution has been developed further through IBM’s Code and Response program and has just completed its first wildfire field test during a controlled burn near Barcelona, Spain. Prometeo was developed by a team comprising a veteran firefighter, an emergency medical nurse and three developers. As recently piloted, the Prometeo hardware-software solution is based on multiple IBM Cloud services.
“With 24 million developers in the world, we wanted to challenge... but also contribute back to society,” said Willie Tejada, IBM general manager & chief developer advocate. Tejada explained that Call for Code timeline:
- In 2018 Call for Code focused on natural disasters.
- In 2019 Call for Code focused on wild fires and fire fighters.
- In 2020 Call for Code focused on climate change.
“So with the focus now on climate change, we drilling down on the whole root of the problem. IBM has wide-scale access to entire [technology… and other] ecosystems and we have had interest from 165 world countries in relation to this challenge. The winners in the competition get to have IBM work to ‘fortify’ their solutions and see them become more fully developed,” said Tejada.
Spanish safety software
Salomé Valero is a software developer at Prometeo, the Spanish fire tech start-up which won last year's Call for Code Challenge. Valero explained the rationale behind her team’s software development efforts and said that when firefighters put their lives at risk extinguishing fires, they risk their health for a number of reasons including smoke inhalation.
“Because of this, we wanted to build a prototype device for potential global use (and we know that fire fighters all over the world have the same challenges) with onboard software to collect information on the amount of carbon monoxide, heat exposure and humidity that these men and women are exposed to during the course of their job,” said Valero.
The Prometeo device is worn on the front of the jacket and collects data from a number of sensors. The data is then downloaded (in fact uploaded) to the IBM Cloud service for analysis. The team developed the firmware on the device and the software console (the user interface) that works with IBM Cloud. The current device connects via a USB cable, but Valero and team are working to develop a next-generation 2.0 device that uses edge computing so that the analytics can be performed in real time while the firefighter is on the job even with intermittent connectivity.
“The stereotype of the self-centred developer that doesn’t want to do something that really helps other people on the planet is changing. They used to be worried about pizza and soda… but now they’re widening their view,” insisted Valero. “I should know, I’m one of those developers!”
IBM’s Willie Tejada further colored the discussion here by saying that if IBM Call for Code had ‘just’ tabled climate change as the topic of the programme here, then perhaps the interest would not perhaps have been so great.
“But what we did was to really challenge the developer – programmers are of course known for their mindset that essentially hinges around the proposition that everything in the world can be solved with software and they love that kind of challenge,” said Tejada. “There’s a wide fabric of data that needs to be managed in this use case. For example in a wildfire arena, if one family refuses to evacuate, that’s as good as the whole town staying… so we’re dealing with both micro and macro views of data… and knowing what both mean ‘in context’ is the only way to take the correct real time action.”
Time for change
Although this account of the work should be tempered with a degree of skepticism (i.e. developers and first responders are rarely seen in the same takeout joints), it’s clear that IBM is big enough and philanthropic enough to want to promote this type of socially responsible development.
After all, for good or bad, we already have Twitter and we already have Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Fortnite, Candy Crush Saga, Angry Birds and Assassin’s Creed… so let’s move on and start saving the planet, charging extra money for plastic bags and looking at polluted city emissions.
Once we’ve done all that, we can crack a soda, order a pizza and get gaming. Just recycle your cans, make sure your pizza box is biodegradable and be sure to carbon offset your flight to the gaming convention.
Team Prometeo
