The Brainiacs

Karachi | Earth Data Analysis Developers Wanted!

Awards & Nominations

The Brainiacs has received the following awards and nominations. Way to go!

Global Nominee

Worldwind GeoBrowser Application

High-Level Project Summary

Our team Brainiacs has opted for the challenge of using an existing space application and improve it by incorporating different data analysis features. We have used an existing open source web application called “WorldWind Web App” and incorporate the following additional features:✔ Added two additional layers in the layers dropdown menu; bing road layer and heat map layer.✔ Added two additional setting features; Atmosphere and Stars.✔ Also added Night Sky animation feature as displayed in the demo video.✔ Added a Projections dropdown menu and in that we have incorporated 9 different projections like 3D, North Polar, etc✔ Feature of move to a specific position on tap or on click.

Link to Final Project

https://github.com/ibrahimrehman1/worldwind-geobrowser-app

Link to Project "Demo"

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZtReBUzVCdXhNGKFXhY1uiJ7Dxbgz-3Q/view

Detailed Project Description

We have utilized an existing template from the resource (shorturl.at/efmIO), it had very minimal features in the beginning including the control panel at the bottom left of the main page of the web application, the compass and other controls, markers and some layers that are visible at the top left drop-down menu of the page, The search menu allowed to enter a location to be viewed. There were some setting options available as well. The user could also zoom into and zoom out of a location to any extent.

We have made the WorldWind JS web application responsive on mobile devices as well previously it was not. The application allows the user to view the globe in a broad spectrum due to the features added in the existing basic template. The added layers include heat map, which when enabled, depicts a colored overlay on top of the map, areas with higher intensity are colored red, and areas with lower intensity are colored green. The “Bing roads” layer is also added using a geospatial mapping platform Bing map to layer the data relevant to the location on top of the licensed map imagery. We have modified the settings to add stars and atmosphere to the view. The user is able to click or tap on a specific location using a personal computer or mobile phone respectively anywhere on the globe to rotate and move to have a better view of the desired location. The night sky animation feature was added to how the night time view at one half of the globe and daytime view at the other half of the globe. There were previously no projections available, now the user has multiple projections like equirectangular, Mercator, north polar, south polar, North UPS, south UPS, north gnomonic, south gnomonic, and 3D by default All of this was done by extending the WorldWind JS library to add the mentioned layers, projections and setting options.

With this application we hope we were able to develop a tool that could help users and space enthusiasts to better visualize our globe from the outer space view. The basic template that we utilized was as good as a picture of the globe and had no dynamic visibility options available for better user experience. We added some important features that provided crucially important layers like the heat map and Bing roads. There are multiple features like the projections, switching to different locations on one tap or click, night and daytime view, enabling and disabling the stars and atmosphere from the view that enhances the user experience while using the application. In this age where people use their laptops when absolutely necessary it was very important for the app to be responsive on mobile phones as well which we considered as a top priority.

The app is based on the following technologies

HTML5

CSS3

JavaScript

Jquery

Bootstrap 4

Knockout JS

WorldWind JS

Space Agency Data

We used the NASA space agency data and the European Space Agency data for our project. We were using it with WorldWind JS.

The data motivated us in improving the application to a great extent. After observing the application, we realized that the data we were receiving was not being utilized properly for a good user experience. Hence, we decided to add new features like heat maps, projections, move to a specific position on click, etc which significantly improved the overall look and feel of the web app.

Hackathon Journey

It was assuredly an amazing learning experience; hackathons always push the competitors to do better in a short span of time.

We were able to learn about some very useful libraries like WorldWind JS and it taught us a lot about how we are able to improve a project at hand, there are many experiences like these in the industries where the developer receives a revision on a project he has not originally worked on.

It was to improve and modify something that was already put up as open source work by the developers that compelled us to take this challenge, when someone has already worked on a project it is supposed to be perfect and it is very tricky to think beyond the possibilities of adding new features when the original developer had not thought about it.

It was to think about a general user, what would he demand more if he opens this existing web application, and what would he thinks is missing in the project.

Each of the members did what they were best at, someone came up with new ideas someone executed them and someone documented them for communicating them better to the audience and jury of the hackathon.

We would like to thank each other as a team for sticking together as a unit and successfully completing this challenge.