From Zaragoza to the gates of NASA in 24 hours

Between coffees, pizzas and the desire to have a good time, with the help of some laptops and in just 24 hours, a team of engineers and computer scientists from Zaragoza have managed to develop a forest fire simulator recognized by NASA as one of the 35 best projects developed. as part of the

a

International [programming marathon] promoted each year by the US agency to promote scientific collaboration and knowledge of Earth and space science, and which held a new edition last October.

Using open data provided by NASA and 11 other collaborating agencies, the participating teams, from 162 countries and territories, fully developed 3,094 projects around the 22 proposed challenges.

one of the teams presented at the Barcelona headquarters, was also selected as a global finalist with a follow-up project to the International Space Station.

predictfire,

This is the name of the Zaragoza project, it is a forest fire simulator that shows both the potential risk of fire and its possible behavior, depending on the characteristics of each terrain.

It is not the first time they have achieved this distinction: they also managed to be finalists three years ago with a mobile app to view satellites and learn from them, which, however, remained inactive due to the lack of support received.

Now they hope to attract the attention that they did not get then in order to continue perfecting their initiative, thanks to potential investors and the collaboration of public administrations.

In Zaragoza, for the moment, they have already met with Carmen Herrarte, the Minister of Economy and Innovation of the Aragonese city.

The idea, conceived and developed on the narrow margins of the NASA challenge,

It is the work of a team made up of Pedro Oros, Andrés Fandos, Lorenzo Cano, David Morilla, Diego Royo and David Ubide.

We talked to the latter two so that they could tell us about

and his plans for the future.

Ask.

How does

David Ubide.

Predictfire is a fire simulator that allows you to predict the potential risk of a fire and its behavior based on a mathematical formula taken from scientific literature.

We have adapted it into a program that uses open data obtained from NASA satellites (specifically, we have used data from Moncayo, a natural space in Aragon) that are crossed with the characteristics of the terrain and the data you have at any given time. , including variables such as water reserves, biomass, wind, slope and propensity for combustion of that area.

Diego Royo.

Once you mark a point where the fire starts, the program makes an animation of where the fire would possibly spread, given the topographical properties of the terrain and the weather conditions.

D. Ubide.

Of course, in the end, we have developed this in 24 hours, and it is not the complete idea.

What we want is for this to become a comprehensive fire simulator: that you can simulate a fire, increase or decrease it, and then have different resources to fight it (fire-fighting helicopters, fire crews, firewalls...) than you do. you can put on the map and have the program tell you how the fire could advance depending on the resource you put on the ground.

Q.

For that, more support will be needed, right?

D. Ubide.

Clear.

In principle, this ends here: we apply to a NASA contest, and what we have is a minimal product.

I'll be honest: Diego works at the university and I work at a private company, and that gives us a lot more to eat than the fire predictor.

If there is no interest from anywhere, it ends here... But if we could develop it and continue with this idea, we would focus on three points: first, we want to improve its predictive capabilities, because there is no public information on fires , it is difficult to verify that it is working well;

Another point would be the simulation of defenses against fire, seeing how it reacts according to the resources on the ground, and that this helps make decisions about what you have to do or where you have to put people so that the fire is extinguished.

The last point would be to make dashboards for those who make those decisions, which include real-time indicators with information on the resources you have deployed, the speed at which the fire is advancing... so that the person responsible can make decisions optimal results in real time based on data and not intuitions.

Q.

What led you to choose this project?

D. Ubide.

There are people

who already come up with ideas, because they are interested in a specific topic, but since we work in other fields, and this is the third time we have participated, the last thing we want to do is think before the event.

And the truth is that, at first, the idea was not this.

When we started, at 10 in the morning, the first thing we did was have a coffee and go to lunch, to see what we could think of.

I had the initial idea of ​​making a war simulator, now that there is the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, but in the end we were inspired by a game called

The one we all played, in which a virus spreads across the world and you have different options to stop it.

And from there came the idea of ​​creating a game in which you would have to make decisions to be able to put out a fire with different resources.

But here goes the spoiler: in 24 hours you don't have time to do that (laughs).

So we decided to create the most perfect simulation that we could achieve and find a visualization that would give value to it, because in the end you have to sell this.

D. Royo.

The idea of ​​this

24-hour hackathon is to make an event where people have a good time.

They offer you free pizza, free coffee... It's just to gather people who like programming, see what others are doing and learn things: web development, applications... Once there you start to investigate, but 24 hours is a very limited time, so what happens?

That suddenly you realize that you have 10 hours left and that you have to deliver something.

So we focus on the simulation part.

D. Ubide.

In the end, we are a bit of a masochist... People look at the challenges and choose and develop an idea based on them.

But our process is totally backwards and illogical: I'm going to do this smoke and then I see what challenge I'll neck it in (laughs).

Q.

Is choosing a project with a social utility important?

D. Ubide.

I've worked with youth all my life, and doing things that people don't see is very hard.

Three years ago we made a satellite viewer for mobile phones,

so that anyone could, for free, see the satellites in real time with 3D models and learn;

click on any of them, access information about their use (this one is for GPS, this one is the international space station...) and even see the Earth from the perspective of those satellites.

We are not going to be professionals of

nor of

That is why we want that, at least, we like what we do, and that if by chance it can be developed, then it will be useful.

In fact, we sent this application to the Zaragoza fire chief, to give it to him for free;

the only requirement is that they use it.

It wasn't very successful, but there it is launched...

D. Royo.

With this work, he also gave us time to reflect and send a message about climate change.

Analyze, for example, what would happen if, due to global warming, the soil were drier than normal, and with this model we see that the fires would be even more devastating.

We wanted to send the message that this would have a real impact.

Realize that if we don't do anything to change things, the consequences will be devastating.

Q.

Are there expectations of being able to continue developing the project?

D. Ubide.

The truth is that they have not paid much attention to us, except for Etopia [the organizing entity of the

in Zaragoza] and the city's Ministry of Economy.

My company participates, but they haven't paid much attention to us, and neither has the university.

Now we are trying to get the idea out there with the media and talking to people.

But it does not give us to live.

Q.

Is there a good entrepreneurial ecosystem in Zaragoza?

D. Ubide.

Initiatives are supported, but only for a few years, and there could be more noise from private companies.

Zaragoza is a diamond in the rough (...) and there is an ecosystem capable of bringing to light many innovative projects [the city council has three accelerators], but both companies and administrations have to continue investing in retaining this talent and offering the best conditions for it to develop.

A lot of ideas come out here, and the

community meets every week.

There are many events, although they may not be getting as much hype as in Madrid, Barcelona or Malaga.

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