Citizen science project to help victims of Hurricane Irma

An unusual collaboration between engineers at Oxford, the Zooniverse citizen science platform and international disaster response organisation Rescue Global is enabling a rapid and effective response to Hurricane Irma. The project draws on the power of the Zooniverse, the world's largest and most popular people-powered research platform, to work with volunteers and crowd source the data needed to understand Irma's path of destruction and the damage caused. Combining these insights with detailed artificial intelligence will support rescue relief organisations to understand the scale of the crisis, and deliver aid to those worst affected as soon as possible. Irma is now judged to be the most powerful Atlantic storm in a decade, breaking previous extreme weather records and causing widespread destruction and death across the Caribbean. Tens of thousands of people have been displaced or made homeless, and well over a million are at risk from loss of critical services such as water and electricity. The disaster poses huge challenges for crisis response teams, who need to assess as quickly as possible the extent of the destruction on islands spread over thousands of square miles, and ensure that the right aid gets to those in most need in the safest and most efficient way. In the immediate aftermath of Irma, Oxford researchers have been working round the clock in partnership with Rescue Global, a respected international crisis response charity, to help address this problem.