The Philippines’ Mobility over Air Quality Index (World MAQI) has won the Global Best Use of Technology Award in the all-virtual Earth Observation (EO) Dashboard Hackathon of the United States space agency National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), European Space Agency (ESA), and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).
World MAQI was named the global winner of the technology award in August, one of the top seven awards in the week-long hackathon held from June 23 to 29, 2021.
The EO Dashboard Hackathon cites the Philippine World MAQI team for developing an “innovative technical approach” equipped for integration into the EO Dashboard, an interactive data resource that gives policymakers a unique tool to probe the short-term and long-term impacts of pandemic-related restrictions through the lens of Earth observation satellites.
The Filipino-made Mobility over Air Quality Index stood out from entries submitted by over 4,000 participants from 132 countries that participated in the competition, which asked innovators to solve issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic using data from the EO Dashboard.
World MAQI is a measurement derived from fusing Mobility statistics provided by Google with air quality data from Earth Observations (NO2) as a means of measuring mobility and the impact to Air Quality.
While the COVID-19 pandemic led to a decrease in mobility, resulting into cleaner air, MAQI fuses the data to provide a visualization that proves the hypothesis. With MAQI, areas that have recovered mobility without negatively affecting air quality can be detected.
The Philippine team is composed of space data researchers and hackathon veterans, including data analyst Dominic Vincent “Doc” Ligot from the University of the Philippines Diliman (UP Diliman), data engineer Mark Neil Pascual from ACLC College, Michael Lance M. Domagas from De La Salle University (DLSU) Manila, and Arturo “Art” Caronongan III, an assistant professorial lecturer from DLSU.
https://twitter.com/SpaceAppsPHIL/status/1423393065796997120
In 2020, Ligot’s team won in the NASA Space Apps Challenge global hackathon for Project AEDES, a dengue case predictor mapping system. The same team also helped set up the worldwide Coronatracker for COVID-19.
Ligot’s team from CirroLytix Research Services, a Philippine-based startup founded by Ligot, earlier developed Global Impact Detection from Emitted Light, Onset of COVID-19, and Nitrogen Dioxide (GIDEON) an integrated public policy information portal measuring the impact of the coronavirus pandemic that won the best use of data global award in the NASA Space Apps COVID-19 Challenge.
SEND CONGRATULATIONS in the comments below to the Philippines’ Mobility over Air Quality Index (World MAQI) for winning the Global Best Use of Technology Award in the all-virtual Earth Observation (EO) Dashboard Hackathon of the United States space agency National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), European Space Agency (ESA), and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).
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