18 April 2016, 5:50 pm – A MOBILE application for disaster response and recovery in a
hypothetical event of an alien spaceship crash, made by students from the
Institute of Information and Computing Sciences, bagged third place in the
“Hack-a-Superpower” competition last April 3 at the SMX Convention
Center.
The winning app of sophomore student Tricia Jasmine Moreno and
junior student Joanouh Nathaniel Abonador, which they called “Helpinator,”
featured interactive prevention and rescue functions that utilized IBM’s
“Watson” artificial intelligence technology to identify the nearest
hospitals and evacuation sites in case of emergency.
A special feature focused on personal health, allowing medics to
preview the victim’s condition before rescue.
“It was hard to code and create solutions within a limited
amount of time, [but] that’s exactly what the computer and programming industry
is all about. We did our best because we wanted UST to be recognized in the
field of computer and programming,” Moreno said in an interview with the
Varsitarian.
Contestants from Asia-Pacific College won first place with their
application called “Flash Trap” that provided a chat interface for efficient
communication and improved disaster response. It used geolocation data to
locate victims and social media feeds for communication.
Polytechnic University of the Philippines Taguig placed second
with “GeoData,” which mapped events and provided SMS notification to concerned
individuals. With GPS tracking, it also showed the nearest evacuation sites and
other information.
Other participating teams were from the Technological University
of the Philippines, National University, Far Eastern University, Adamson
University, Jose Rizal University and STI.
The contest, organized by IBM Philippines, information
technology professional group Developers Connect (DevCon), and sci-fi
convention NexCon 3, provided students the opportunity to showcase their coding
skills to craft a “real-world solution” to a sci-fi themed problem. Vianca
A. Ocampo
