Titulo Estágio
Implementation of the FireLoc Application
Áreas de especialidade
Engenharia de Software
Local do Estágio
DEI-FCTUC
Enquadramento
FireLoc is a research project funded by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia. It aims at developing a system that will allow:
1. the report of a spotted fire by any volunteer citizen provided with a smartphone, including automatic geolocation (place of observation), imagery of what is being observed (e.g. photograph taken with the smartphone), and data enabling to georeference the observed phenomenon - namely, the orientation (automatically picked up from the smartphone) and the approximate distance between the observer and the observed event;
2. the identification, for each contribution, of the approximate geolocation of the observed event, the degree of confidence of data received (whose determination will be based on volunteer’s credibility according to the personal profile and history of contributions), and the geographic context of both sites, the observation site and event site (this will be based on land cover information of the vicinity of both sites and on digital terrain models);
3. the integration and processing of data made available by volunteers who are meant to provide data/information almost in real time on geolocation, severity and extent of the observed phenomena.
This system comprises three components:
1. a data collection component, which will be developed for mobile platforms;
2. a data integration and processing component, which includes a geospatial component, and therefore will be developed using Geographic Information Systems, and will allow the evaluation of credibility of reported information and also the identification of the geolocation of events and their geospatial extent;
3. a component for providing information to the general public and institutions, which will be developed for both mobile and desktop platforms and will allow the monitoring of the reported events’ progress.
Objetivo
FireLoc will allow the development of an innovative system capable of reporting, integrating, and validating georeferenced data in real-time related to forest fires. This will allow in turn the monitoring of a fire progress totally based on information provided by citizens. Strong aspects are as follows: 1) all citizens are potential users and can in fact report spotted fires – given the fact that in Portugal’s rural areas many villages and local communities are part of the forest fabric itself, these citizens constitute valuable potential users of the proposed system that can be extremely useful in quickly detecting & reporting new fire occurrences; 2) a system where visual perception of the geolocation of reported events is evident; 3) a system that can be used not only by the general public, but also by authorities – different sorts of user-profiles will be allowed providing each type of user with specific sorts of services and specific sorts of information according to the typical user-profile needs. Limitations typically associated to a system with such characteristics, mainly refer to the quality and reliability of data/information provided by volunteer citizens. That is why the incorporation in the system of adequate methodologies capable of validating data/information provided by volunteers constitutes precisely one of the main challenges of this project.
The server will provide multiple APIs:
1. User management: registration, deletion, login, user credibility, etc..
2. Geographic data API: this will be mostly provided by external third-party companies.
3. Event location assessment and characterization, to check the user-provided position and data.
4. Validation and recognition of uploaded images.
5. Processing and classification of user-provided text.
6. Map server to enable clients to display geographical information.
Regarding the server side, this internship will be focused on interconnecting the multiple APIs on a single coherent system and on developing the #1 and #6 APIs.
The student must also create web and mobile front-ends to access this information. It is also a goal of this work to make the information available to the general public as well as other private groups, e.g., the civil protection. This may involve the creation of a separate web site to expose past information collected during fires and segregated according to group permissions.
This work will be integrated in the collective efforts of the FireLoc project and will receive contributions from other team members and from systems that already exist.
This work started in the previous year. We already have initial versions of the mobile and web applications. Nonetheless, these applications are not finished and we need to improve them with more features and make them more stable.
Plano de Trabalhos - Semestre 1
- Understand the project and the current state of the applications (1.5 months).
- Prepare for the front-end and back-end technologies (Angular, Redux, Django) (1.5 months).
- Define improvements to the front-end and back-end (1 month).
- Write intermediate report (1 month).
Plano de Trabalhos - Semestre 2
- Implement the improvements to the back-end system (2 months).
- Implement the improvements to the front-end system (2 months).
- Test and evaluate performance (1 months).
- Write final report (1 month).
Condições
The work should take place at the Centre for Informatics and Systems of the University of Coimbra (CISUC) at the Department of Informatics Engineering of the University of Coimbra in the scope of the FireLoc research project.
A 745 euros per month scholarship is foreseen for 3 months. The attribution of the scholarship is subject to a public application.
Orientador
Filipe Araújo e Joaquim Patriarca
filipius@uc.pt 📩