GDF Water Warriors Provide Tools for Firefighters to Become 'Water Diviners'

Sat, 01 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

This weekend the Growing Data Foundation’s (GDF) team – the ‘Water Warriors’ is competing in the Australia and New Zealand GovHack Competition. GovHack is an international competition for people of all abilities who seek to make life better through open data. Across one weekend, thousands come together to form teams, agree on projects, and participate in what has become one of the world’s largest open data competitions.

Conducted over a 46-hour period, the competition requires participating teams to create concepts, mashups and models with open government data, to examine the challenges facing government and communities in new and innovative ways.

The Australian 2020 Black Summer bushfires were unprecedented in their scale and level of destruction. More than three billion animals were killed, over 450 people lost their lives, approximately 17 million hectares of land was burnt and more than 6,000 homes and buildings were destroyed.

In the aftermath of these fires, one of the major problems that firefighters universally identified was the difficulty experienced accessing water. In drought affected regions, access to dam and mains water was understandably significantly restricted. In other regions, poorly maintained water hydrants made it difficult to access mains water in a safe way, and no real-time data was available to inform local crews as to the location and level of water storage in static water supplies e.g. water tanks, swimming pools and dams.

In the spirit of using open government data to create a tangible solution to this critical issue, the GDF Water Warriors have created a web application – ‘FireWater’ to demonstrate how low-cost, long range radio technologies (LoRaWAN) and open GIS mapping systems can be used to provide real time water source data to on-the-ground fire crews, in particular the location and status of fire hydrants, water tanks and other natural water sources. It will also incorporate a journey planning functionality, to direct fire crews to nearest available water sources. In developing this exciting application, the Water Warriors have indeed created the capacity for firefighters to become true ‘Water Diviners’.

The GDF team has entered ‘FireWater’ into one South Australia, Australian and International category. Winners will be announced over the coming weeks at formal Awards Nights. I will keep you posted on how we go. Fingers crossed that the team can win at least one category. Regardless, the team believes that it will have made a huge contribution to ensuring that by providing firefighters with the technology tools to become ‘Water Diviners’, that come next fire season, knowledge of available water sources is not one of the major challenges they will have to face.

Go GDF Water Warriors!!!!

The Growing Data Foundation – A True GovHack Success Story

Sat, 01 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

In 2014, Leo Gaggl — then working in the education and government sector on online learning and open education — recognised that the GovHack SA competition was an opportunity to demonstrate what open data could do for communities. He reached out to a broad group of colleagues and clients, many from education and government, to form a team. Fourteen people responded, and together the fifteen-strong “Nature Ninjas” entered GovHACK SA. The challenge was to develop something useful from previously unseen open data provided by state and commonwealth government departments, local councils, media agencies and universities.

The team accessed data from the State Flora Catalogue and mashed it up with Waite Arboretum Spatial Data and added lookups to the Atlas of Living Australia to develop a prototype application titled ‘What grows here?’. This mobile application can be used to identify flora that is indigenous to any particular geographical location using the GPS function on smart phones. Furthermore, the list of native plants that is displayed can be filtered and selected for certain features such as height, colour and purpose, which makes the application equally useful to either the home gardener or land managers.

The collective skills, commitment and passions of the team were rewarded by winning two state awards and one national award in the following categories: Unleashed Premier’s Award ($30,000); Building on Science, Research &Environmental Data ($2,500); and the People’s Choice Award ($2000).

This prize money was used to establish the Growing Data Foundation (incorporated in January 2015), to promote the development of open projects and systems that support the development of sustainable solutions to environmental, economic and social problems. The Growing Data Foundation is one of the very few, if not the only, project that was initiated during the GovHACK SA in 2014 that is still in existence and continuing to do great work.

For example, in 2016 the Growing Data Foundation founded The Things Network (TTN) Adelaide and currently facilitates the Adelaide OpenData and IoT Meetup that has over 900 subscribers.

In 2019, the Growing Data Foundation was awarded the sole rights to conduct The Things Network Asia Pacific On Tour Conference that was attended by over 150 people and very well-received by a diverse range of stakeholders. In lieu of a large physical conference due to COVID-19, the Growing Data Foundation is planning a range of smaller educational activities over the next 12 months featuring industry experts from across the globe in five key streams – Technical, Environmental, AgTech, Education and Smart Cities.

In June 2020, the Growing Data Foundation was invited by the District Council of Loxton Waikerie located in the Riverland region of South Australian to lead a Riverland Schools IoT Project. The aim of this project is to get staff and students in the four Riverland high schools involved in curriculum-based activities that use open, real-time data collected via sensors and LoRaWAN infrastructure recently installed across the Riverland to solve social, economic or environmental problems.

From Friday 14 – Sunday 16, 2020 members of the Growing Data Foundation will be joined by a team of other interested individuals to compete in the GovHack Competition which will be held simultaneously across Australia and New Zealand. During the 46-hour period the team will be required to create concepts, mashups and models with open government data, to examine the challenges facing government and communities in new and innovative ways.

Once again the Growing Data Foundation has an exciting and innovative project idea that it aims to bring to fruition over the weekend. Watch this space to find out what the Growing Data Foundation ‘Water Warriors’ have been able to achieve in this latest Govhack Competition!

Jenny McCormick | Growing Data Foundation

GDF Water Warriors Provide Tools for Firefighters to Become 'Water Diviners'

The Growing Data Foundation – A True GovHack Success Story