READYsaster

The Philippines experienced series of natural calamities that often leads to a number of residents in fear and chaos. The last calamity known as the Super Typhoon Yolanda caused a lot of Filipinos to lose both their homes and, for the unfortunate ones to lose their lives.

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Not all Filipinos knew where to go or what to do on these situations, but most will use their gadgets to ask for help from others. The problems are telecommunications provider is not always dependable or loses their service, sometimes even if the network is available, the people they can reach would not knew what to do or could also be in the same situation.

This is why Open Data Philippines Task Force together with the World Bank Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery, Smart Telecommunication and other private corporations recently spearheaded the Readysaster: Hack for Resilience competition that brought together hundreds of programmers to create an

innovative solution to address local disaster risk management challenges.

After the two days of programming (hacking), a team of IT professors from Gordon College in Zambales won the top award for its mobile application, iLigtas, which provided many disaster management features that could help those in both real-time and situational. Everyone had fun programming their way to the top, and they were recognized as remarkable programmers for their competence, creativity and innovation. Yewondowossen Assefa of World Bank complemented, “The applications that they manage to produce in two days are high quality and very useful for disaster management.”  

 The College of Computing and Information Sciences of Systems Plus College Foundation participated in the said Hackathon which was represented by Aldrel Cruz, Charmaine Tolentino, Glen Lawrence Ramos and Andrew Gomez, who were all on their final year as BSIT Students. - Rio Renzo R. Lumanog , Jaspreet K. Dol (BSIT students).

Photo taken from The Philippine Star Vol. XXVIII No. 294, Monday, May 19, 2014 Edition, Page17.