Coding for Catastrophe: Contest Seeks Apps to Mitigate Effects of Natural Disasters | AI

Entrants will also be encouraged to attend hackathons, to be held in 50 cities around the world, including Amsterdam, Bengaluru, Berlin, Delhi, Dubai, London, New York, Sao Paulo, and Tel Aviv, as well as San Francisco.

Generally, contest entrants should show that they are “reducing vulnerability by mitigating disaster risk over the long run, anticipating impending threats to improve precautionary short and long-term measures, responding to medical needs during the disaster, and improving the overall resiliency of communities to rebuild health services in the wake of major disruptions,” said the press release.

What kind of apps will win? Only the judging panel—which will include Linus Torvalds—knows. But IBM chief developer advocate William Tejada told me that software that combines technologies and data in unique and helpful ways are of particular interest.

One example from the press release: “developers might create an application that alerts pharmacies to increase their stocks of antibiotics, insulin, bottled water, and vaccines based on predicted weather-related disruptions.” In a similar vein, Tejada suggested, an app might be able to analyze the impact of hurricane preparedness on hardware stores and make sure the most important items are easily available.

In addition to the cash prizes, winning teams will get help from the Linux Foundation, introductions to venture capitalists, and assistance with rolling out their technologies from IBM’s Corporate Services Corps, Tejada said.

More details are available at CallforCode.org.