Development of Multi-Hazard Coastal Resiliency Assessment and Adaptation Indices and Tools for the Charleston, SC Region

Resilience Product Development: Building a Product for Our Community’s Needs

Milestone 5 Technical Evaluation of Localized Indices by Project Resiliency Advisory Panel

(RAP) and an External Technical Peer Review

Subcontract No. 13-16-SCSGC

Submitted by:

Vanessa Martin and M. Richard DeVoe S.C. Sea Grant Consortium

287 Meeting Street Charleston, SC 29401

843-953-2078

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Table of Contents

Judging Objectives: ......................................................................................................................... 3

Conclusion and Identified Needs: ................................................................................................ 3-4

Appendix A | Chucktown Floods Hack Judging Criteria ............................................................... 5

Appendix B | List of Judges and Teams that Competed ................................................................. 6

Appendix C | Features of the Website Created by Knee Deep .................................................... 7-9

Appendix D | Judges Unedited Feedback and Thoughts ......................................................... 10-14

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Overview of the Hackathon Judging and Selection of Winning Prototype

The Chucktown Floods Hackathon was held over the course of a three-day weekend, August 24-26, 2018. An invitation was circulated prior to the event to solicit interest from prospective developers and hackers. Teams from diverse backgrounds in the coding (front and back-end development), web development, data-science management and other fields in technology and science were invited to develop a two-part integrated web-based and mobile-responsive tool that reduces barriers to accessing data associated with flooding vulnerability, and enhances decision-making to improve resilience to flooding events in the Greater Charleston Region. On the last day of the Chucktown Floods Hackathon, August 26, 2018, teams that were planning to present prototypes had to register no later than 1 p.m. The judges were given Judging Criteria that were used to assess each team that presented a prototype. When evaluating each team, the judges evaluated the following elements from the judging criteria: (1) Use and Idea, (2) Experience, and (3) Implementation. The full judging criteria can be found in Appendix A. The judges heard each team’s presentation and had 20 minutes to both talk with team members and test each prototype. Finally, the judges met to share and discuss their evaluations, develop their recommendations, and determine the winner and runners-up. Five judges were identified to conduct the evaluation of the teams presenting at the Chucktown Floods Hackathon, and were selected based on the following criteria:

1. Each judge is an expert in the area that was covered in the judging criteria questions. i.e. How does the website leverage APIs?

2. Judges were picked out of stakeholder lists, so that the interests of the overall demographics were protected (e.g., one of the judges is a Flood Planner for the City of Charleston).

3. Judges were also selected and confirmed through the Hackathon Committee based on submissions or recommendations they had received.

Lists of judges and the teams that competed can be found in Appendix B.

Conclusion and Identified Needs Judges tallied and finalized scores for each team that competed. From there, a winner of the hackathon was chosen. The team that won was Knee Deep. Runners-up were Drop Outs and Flood B & B. The Knee Deep website is directed at the main stakeholders and allows for varying aspects and features ranging from social media to educational information in the form of resource libraries for each stakeholder. The website and a few features of the prototype website can be seen in Appendix C. Commonalities shared across all of the judges’ evaluation of the winning team were:

1. Effectively addressed all objectives of the prototype. 2. Best designed prototype with the ability to expand and incorporate more tools, like a

social media aspect.

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3. Overall most well-organized platform, filter system, and ease of use (visual design) for the customer.

Commonalities shared across all of the judges’ evaluation of the runners-up were: 1. Both had unique designs that were creative and effective. 2. Both had a more social media-driven aspect. 3. Both had some effective technical tools, i.e. search tools or ability to add tools.

The judges’ unedited feedback and thoughts on all the teams can be found in Appendix D.

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Appendix A

Chucktown Floods Hack Judging Criteria

Figure 1: Judging Criteria shown above was used to judge the prototypes that were presented at the Chucktown Floods Hack on August 26, 2018.

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Appendix B

List of Judges and Teams that Competed List of the five judges that judged the teams (prototypes) that presented at the hackathon

1. Doug Marcy, NOAA Office of Coastal Management 2. Amanda Knight, Mt. Pleasant EMD/EOC 3. Stephen Julka, Flood Planner, City of Charleston 4. Emma Paz, GIS Developer, City of Charleston 5. Shaun Moylan, IT Resource Manager, SC Sea Grant Consortium

List of the seven teams that competed in the hackathon

Team Supernate (Super-not) Meagan Gould Lauren Tubbs

Brandi Durham Austin Hollis Chris Owens

The Dropouts

Travis Nesland Alex Boquist

Micheal Growette Bryan Chappell

Hydrophobe Alex Skiff

Blaine Billings Caudio Spiess Justin Willis

ProTechs Alex Krauss Loftin Kohn

Xandre Clementsmith Leah Martin

William Blanchett Georges Mahama

Flood Life

Alex Swanson Daniel Hwang

David Rust John Quinn

Flood B&B

Brandon Hare Bobby Earl

Team Knee Deep

Liah Wallace Yetzamil Gonzalez

Rex Ferrer Joe Dwyer

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Appendix C

Features of the Website Created by Knee Deep

Figure 2: This is a screen shot of the homepage for site that Knee Deep developed during the Chucktown Floods Hackathon.

Figure 3: This image shows what the users would be presented with after clicking on the homepage options seen in Figure 2.

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Figure 4: Once the client selects a category from figure 3, they are presented with a grid/list of relevant articles. Each group shown in figure 1 has an equivalent of this type of page.

Figure 5: This is the Resource Library page, where users are presented with articles that can be filtered down by category. This is an equivalent Resource Library page for the Data Sources.

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Figure 6: The Flood Data page on the website allows the users to contribute data on floods happening in their area.

Figure 7: The Social Media page is where information can be found from places like @chswx Twitter feed, a current-weather widget with an option to check tides. The Social Media page also allows users to contribute to flood data.

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Appendix D

Judges Unedited Feedback and Thoughts

Chucktown Floods Hack Results – Judge #1 As you can see from the overall scores, it was a tight competition. There were many good ideas and lots of good technology suggested by the hackathon participants. I was especially impressed by the younger college participants. They were passionate about the subject and had some really good ideas. I hope they keep up the passion and thought this was worthwhile endeavor. Ultimately, my higher ratings came down to the amount of previous experience developing tools and the make-up of the team members, as well as the integration and ease of use of the proposed tools. Team Name: ProTechs This team seemed like a college think tank. They highlighted water levels at locations and suggesting building a catalog of tools but had no GIS integration. I rated them a 32 on use and idea, 18 on experience, and 13 on implementation. They received a total score of 63. Team Name: SuperNate This team highlighted Evacuation Routes and a map section highlighting the flood zone. I rated them a 36 on use and idea, 19 on experience, and 21 on implementation. They received a total score of 76. Team Name: FloodLife This team highlighted using social media and twitter API for doing flood warnings and flood information. The described a data portal and a search database, and all would be cloud based. I thought this would be a better fit with the City’s FloodCon project. I rated them a 43 on use and idea, 21 on experience, and 21 on implementation. They received a total score of 85. Team Name: Flood B&B This team highlighted using the Amazone Azure cloud and a crowd-sourcing app with a unique search filter and all open-source software. The search-filter option should be considered in the final application because it seemed very useful. I rated them a 38 on use and idea, 23 on experience, and 26 on implementation. They received a total score of 87 and were my third place choice. Team Name: Dropouts This team highlighted using the Algolia search package, which is a good search engine that could be used in the final database product. They used Mapbox for the GIS integration. This was all based on open-source technology and seemed pretty doable. I rated them a 46 on use and idea, 21 on experience, and 24 on implementation. They received a total score of 91 and were my second-place choice.

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Team Name: Knee Deep This team highlighted resource database based on filtering and categories that will make it an easier user interface. They included citizen-science ideas as well as a real-time water level sensor component. They also discussed incorporating a social media feed into the tool. This group had the most experience and technical ability and best ideas for developing the mapping application and tool database. I rated them a 48 on use and idea, 24 on experience, and 22 on implementation. They received a total score of 94 and were my first-place choice. Chucktown Floods Hack Results – Judge #2 SuperNate Pros: Scored high on feasibility and purpose. The team adhered closely to the objective and developed a functional tool that met many of the requirements. Cons: Scored low on Creativity, uniqueness, and value. The team did not come up with original ideas or ways to add value to the maps, data, or overall site functionality. Pro Techs Pros: Did not score particularly low in any area. The product did well address the Data Repository requirement and overall had potential to be further developed. Cons: Did not score particularly high in any area. There was a lot of room for improvement on the Resilience Portal and interactive map. The overall product scored low in viability. Flood Life Pros: The team took a creative and unique approach by focusing on Social Media to reach users. The product was intuitive and development was feasible and cost-effective. Cons: The team focused on driving traffic to the site, but the actual site lacked valuable tools. The product scored low on value and purpose; it did not address all the objectives. Flood B&B Pros: Scored high on purpose and feasibility. Team did well address the overall objective and had a functional prototype. The product also had value and was intuitive. Cons: Scored low on creativity and uniqueness. The product was relatively simple and not very innovative. There was no mechanism for user feedback. Drop Outs Pros: The team had good ideas to further develop the product. The 3D Map was a creative and unique idea, as was the incorporation of real time monitoring devices and the tool search function. Cons: The 3D Map lacked in functionality and was not able to incorporate current 2D models. The tool search function was not very intuitive. The prototype was not able to demonstrate much of the value the team envisioned for the finished product. Knee Deep Pros: The team did the best job of addressing all the product objectives. The prototype was functional and demonstrated value. The product scored relatively well in all areas and showed potential for further development.

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Cons: The product was not as creative as some of the others and needs better design for user interface. Chucktown Floods Hack Results – Judge #3 Supernate: The team completed the task given to them and met all of the expected minimum requirements, but did not produce a resource with any creativity beyond what was required. Their strengths were in intuitiveness and feasibility, as the product was simple and easy to use. Dropouts (top 3): The 3D map function was creative, but the one piece of information that any property owner can tell you is the conditions in which their property floods and how much, so this tool isn’t very helpful. Points for creativity, uniqueness, intuitiveness, and visual appeal, but there could have been some clearer technical direction and useful data. ProTechs: The group spent more of their presentation time talking about flooding generally than demonstrating their product, so it was difficult to assess the quality of the platform they created. The product was visually appealing and intuitive for the user but seemed to lack substance. Flood BnB (top 3): High points for creativity. The incorporation of social media for real time ground-truthing is a very useful tool, and the ability to add tools within the data repository is good way to allow the tool to grow over time. The framework was well done, but the tool lacked substance. Flood Life: The presentation was too long, too informal, and lacked demonstration of the tool. The use of Twitter for real time crowd sourcing is creative, but the tool relied too heavily on this aspect, which allows for inaccurate information to be presented. This group did a good job of knowing the probable users and tailoring the tool to them, making it intuitive and user-focused. Knee Deep (winner): This was simply the most complete and well-designed tool presented. The opening page with a selection of the user that then tailored the web experience and data to the type of user is very useful. The tool was very intuitive, but offered a lot of technical data. The Citizen Science portal could have been expanded to include a social media component and the search tool could be tweaked to be more useful, but this was the clear overall winner. Chucktown Floods Hack Results – Judge #4 Supernate

• Passionate team of students • Focused on organizing tools/data into database via keyword terms

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The Dropouts • Team of dev professionals • Knowledgeable of widgets, APIs, toolkits • Simple but smart fool-proof “Google” search design

ProTechs

• Team of students with passionate aspirations to contribute to the community’s need • General app design focused on simplifying content for intended audience

(planners/managers vs. citizens) Flood B&B

• Team of dev professionals • Widgets approach to app design, using Azure toolkits • Interesting addition of social media as potential real-time component to overlay with

existing GIS data Flood Life

• Social media-driven content that may be appealing to certain audiences (potentially fellow students)

• Clear focus on cloud-driven infrastructure to meet scalable app needs and interesting concept to “capture” data (via API) for future Emergency Mgmt-related needs

Knee Deep

• Nice visual designs • Well-rounded platform that organized and filtered content by user-type • Interesting ideas to incorporate real-time data (either via citizen-science input or sensor-

collected data) • Well-rounded team with various skill-sets/experience

Chucktown Floods Hack Results – Judge #5 There is a discrepancy in the score cards and my final ranking. My ranking changed during the deliberation with the team of judges. Their subject matter expertise was enlightening. The runners up in order are DropOuts, Flood B&B, and Flood Life. Below are my initial scores as the teams presented. Initial Scores and Ranks

• SuperNate: 50 • ProTechs: 61 • The DropOuts: 69 • Flood B&B: 86 • Flood Life: 98 • Knee Deep: 118

My Final Ranking of Teams (Winner and Runners-up down)

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• Knee Deep • Flood B&B • The Dropouts • Flood Life • ProTechs • SuperNate