Challenges 2023 - KUL12What Changed in Malaysian Waters? Development of basic application programming interface (API) with Real time collection and representation of open-sourced remote sensing data

Challenges Description:

Climate change has been threatening our livelihood and longevity of human civilization. Thus, the public should be aware of the empirical data and situation of climate change, so as to react and adapt to the situation. However, most data evidence of climate change in both governance and public awareness are hard to access or understand by the public. Furthermore, it takes large, long, and robust database to represent comprehensively the effects of climate change, due to its subtle and slow effect on us. Nevertheless, with the development of easy access, real-time collection, and open-sourced data on our environment, such data could never had been easier to access. With that said, such large data require a mammoth effort to organize, analyse and represent it in a publicly acceptable way.

To date, such accessibility, both in publicly availability and understandability, is still lacking, which limits the awareness of climate change (especially the ocean) in our public. Especially in Malaysia, where we are in the centre of the biodiversity hotspot, Coral Triangle, which is threaten by climate change. Such effort to collate and disseminate the data is much needed. Hence, we require an effort to automate the collection of such real-time data in open-source platform regularly and represent it in the context of Malaysia to raise the awareness.

The main objective of the project is to let the participants create a simple website which can help in educating the masses on climate change in developing countries (such as Malaysia). Temperature has been the dominant measurement of climate change. However, there are also a few indicator parameters which can be mined from satellite images. They are Sea Surface Temperature, Chlorophyll a, Salinity, rain cloud formation and more. The output of the challenge will see a development of common application programming interface (API) that can help in streamlining and optimizing the process. The participants will have to generate an API based on data from established database (i.e. GES DISC database), and turn to interactive application: annual, decadal average, annual difference, decadal difference), At the end of the session, participants will generate a simple interactive software, which can be used for public education and awareness program on climate change.

What the challenge owner would like to develop over 48h

• Create an API that can be applied to any website which are interested in representing climate change data of Malaysia (and perhaps the other parts of the world if opportunity given)

Which skills the challenge owner is looking for

• Python, R, SQL, Marine Science, Modeler, Marine Biologist, Social Conservationist, Web developer, Graphist, Communication specialist