/space_app_challenge

2017 space app challenge

Primary LanguageShell

2017 Nasa Space Challenge Hackathon

Team

UpperEast

Challenge

Every Cloud

Map severe weather conditions with the presence of local atmospheric aerosols to identify potential connections!

Solution

We created a platform to display NEO data and events from other sources.

Example

Data Layer 1: The observed event data (volcanic eruption in this case)

  • Create a KML file with event. Mark the timestamp and location of the event with an icon. In this case, we used volcanic eruption as the observed event.
  • Download the volcanic eruption data from The Smithsonian Institution's Global Volcanism Program (GVP) for all volcanic eruption in 2011.
  • volcano2011.kml file contains all volcanic eruption data in 2011 with latitude and longitude infomation in coordinates elements, volcano name in name tag and specify the placemark icon in styleUrl as a volcano to visualize on Google Earth. To visualize and observe the impact of volcanic eruption, we used TimeSpan to show 6-8 month period of time after a volcanic eruption.
<Placemark>
	<name>Grimsvotn</name>
   		<gx:TimeSpan>
           <begin>2011-05-21</begin>
           <end>2012-02-15</end>
       </gx:TimeSpan>
       <styleUrl>#volcano</styleUrl>
       <Point>
           <gx:drawOrder>1</gx:drawOrder>
           <coordinates>-17.316,64.416,0</coordinates>
       </Point>
</Placemark>

Data Layer 2: Aerosol Optical Thickness and Rainfall data from NASA

  • Download aerosol optical thickness data from NEO. Use data of 8 days. Put the PNG files into a folder named OpticalThickness8Days.
  • Create a KML file with aerosol optical thickness data with opacity set to 0xbf. 
    ./neo_png_merger.py -i ../data/OpticalThickness8Days -o out_2011_aerosol -p bf
  • Download rainfall data from NEO. Choose one day out of every 8 days. Put the PNG files into a folder named E_DAYS.
  • Create a KML file with rainfall data with opacity set to 0x6f. 
    ./neo_png_merger.py -i ../data/E_DAYS -o out_2011_rain_8d -p 6f

Overlay the KML files for data layer 1 and 2 in Google Earth

  • Load volcano2011.kml, out_2011_aerosol.kml and out_2011_rain_8d.kml in Google Earth.
  • Set the desired time to play in timeline toolbar.
  • Observe the relation between event and aerosol data and rainfall data.

Results

For example, we can display the aerosol data, rain data and volcano eruption events during 2011 all together. The results looks like the following video.

Youtube Link