An app made by Filipinos made it to the global level of the final’s list of the NASA Space Apps Challenge. The Filipino-made app was one of the 2,729 entries in 200 locations all over the world that joined in the competition. Now, only 25 remains and will compete for the six spots of the biggest hackathon in the universe.
This is the first time a Filipino team made it to the final’s list at the global level.
The Filipino app called ISDApp aims to communicate scientific data to fishermen even without an Internet connection. It was created by IT professionals Revbrain G. Martin, Marie Jeddah Legaspi, and Julius Czar Torreda from team iNON, which stands for “It’s now or never.”
The app’s name came from the Tagalog word “isda” meaning fish, it sends useful information to fishermen such as real-time weather, sunrise and sunset, wind speed, and cloud coverage to plan their fishing activities in catching more fish using the NASA GLOBE Observer app, a data collection from citizen scientists around the world used in concert with NASA satellite data to identify or communicate information, and educating the public about planet Earth. Fishermen will receive SMS notifications from the Amazon Web Services gateway while local government officials would manage their details using a smartphone app connected to the cloud. NASA scientists and experts consider this fisherfolk app made by Pinoys as one of the solutions “with the most potential to improve life on Earth or in the universe,” therefore nominated as the global finalist for Galactic Impact.
To know more about ISDApp, watch the video below.
For more information about the NASA Space Apps Challenge, read it here.
