GREENVILLE – Disaster response startup Project OWL received top honors, $200,000, and the opportunity to work with global partners on worldwide implementation of their portable, easy-to-deploy network devices, the “ducklink,” at the culmination of IBM’s Call for Code Global Challenge. Owl stands for Organization, Whereabouts, and Logistic.
Launched in May 2018, IBM’s Call for Code Global Challenge offered innovators, entrepreneurs, students, academics, and developers from across the globe free access to IBM products with the goal of facilitating the rapid prototyping of open-source solutions that could improve disaster response and recovery efforts.
Project OWL, led by East Carolina University alum Magus Pereira, uses existing technology that is likely to be in the hands or vicinity of disaster victims–their smartphones, tablets, and laptops.
Call for Code
“Usually during a natural disaster, people are going to experience blackouts, which means there will be no wifi,” said Pereira, “and responders and call centers can be overrun with calls.”
Project OWL plans to use “ducklinks,” or hyper-portable hardware devices that create a portable, mobile wireless network across a disaster region, to enable victims on the ground to share recovery and rescue data directly to responders.
Think about when you visit a Starbucks, said Pereira, and open up your laptop to connect to wireless internet. You’ll typically see a “terms of use” agreement and click a button in order to gain access to the network.
The ducklinks will operate in a similar fashion, and won’t require disaster victims to download an application. All they’ll need to do is open up a browser or their wireless settings on their device. A connection screen will pop up, and users are able to share the most pertinent details about their rescue as the very first step. The ducklinks then package that data, and send to larger infrastructure, or “mamaducks” and “papaducks,” ultimately ending up in the hands of responders at their mobile command center, often miles away.
Project Owl’s winning team, including Magus Pereira at right.
“We wanted our devices to be all-terrain,’ said Pereira. “Ducks can swim, walk on land, and they can fly,” he said, “we wanted our devices to be able to float, to be able to be dropped on land, sent into buildings, and to have the potential to be equipped on aerial devices like drones.”
Behind the winning concept
Pereira developed the idea for the hardware prototype in the spring of 2017 while a student at East Carolina University in Pitt County, North Carolina. Pitt County had experienced dramatic damage and aftereffects from Hurricane Matthew in October 2016, and the East Carolina University Honors College organized a 24-hour hackathon to develop viable ideas on how communities could better prepare for and respond to disaster when it struck.
“It was obvious that Magus was next level,” said Dennis Tracz, an entrepreneur-in-residence at East Carolina University’s Miller School of Entrepreneurship, who was one of three judges at that hackathon event in spring 2017. “What I recall they pitched, basically, were ping-pong balls with wifi chips in them.”
Pereira and his collaborator at the hackathon–each of the other four teams had five participants–took the top prize, and Pereira continued to think about how to bring the concept to market. He worked with mentors through the Honors College and through the Miller School of Entrepreneurship, and when IBM announced the Call for Code Global Challenge, he quickly pre-registered.
Through the open-source project, Pereira connected with Bryan Knouse, an expert in AI and natural language processing, who wanted to find a software-side application for victim’s location information to be shared with responders. Together, they realized that they could merge their concepts and create a viable, effective, and deployable hardware solution that would benefit responders in providing assistance or structuring rescue for disaster victims.
Project OWL was born.
“It’s a remarkable achievement,” said Tracz, “his idea led to his winning this IBM Call for Code Global Challenge.”
What $200,000 and winning can do for disaster recovery
“We provide an alternative experience to responders and an intuitive experience for civilians seeking help,” said Pereira, “through an innovative interface that is provided to them from the ducklinks.”
The result?
“It takes all the hardware’s data and maps it out on the software management system that is provided to responders,” said Pereira, giving them information in real-time in order to effectively deploy resources to identify the most severely impacted areas and the specific locations where people are in need of rescue or assistance.
“Over the last four months, we worked on coming up with a simple and efficient prototype that we could complete in the three-month sprint for the submission to the challenge,” said Pereira. “We have a roadmap for the project, and we were going to move forward regardless of how we performed.”
The team was named the winner of the challenge earlier this week Along with $200,000 in prize money, which Pereira intends to be used to further refine viable and ground-tested prototypes, Project OWL will also gain access to deploy the solution through the IBM Corporate Service Corps, and other benefits. Team members also receive the opportunity to pitch their concept and display their technology to venture capitalist firm NEA to secure additional funding for their project.
“We want to work with actual experts that are really proficient with radio technology and build our own device from scratch,” said Pereira. “The funding will help us go a long way with that.” The team plans to work alongside communities and organizations that are already set up to respond to a disaster, along with the folks at IBM’s Corporate Service Corps. “We have plans with the prize money, to make sure we are able to get a working device before the next major disaster,” said Pereira.
“Disaster is unpredictable, so we don’t know the exact timeline, but we will spend every penny to make sure that we can make an immense impact in a community affected by disaster.”
