Hurricane Florence in the Atlantic. Typhoon Mangkhut in the Pacific. An earthquake and landslides in Hokkaido. These three major natural disasters hit the planet in the first half of September 2018. Smaller or less-publicized disasters occur daily. ReliefWeb, a clearinghouse for information on global crises and disasters, counts 64 such events thus far in 2018. Emergency preparedness and disaster relief efforts are complex to organize and execute.

How can computer code developers provide tools that significantly improve preparedness and relief efforts? Source: U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Erick RequadtCall for Code, a project led by creator David Clark Cause and founding partner IBM, seeks to answer this question by making natural disaster preparedness and relief the project’s first-year focus. The call invites academic, startup and enterprise software developers to join together to tackle these significant issues. Cause and IBM are offering a sweetener to encourage participation: a global competition that will honor the winning application with a $200,000 prize and the chance to work with IBM’s Corporate Service Corps to deploy the solution.

Since May 24, multiple virtual and live events across the globe have encouraged coders to explore how technologies like artificial intelligence, blockchain, cloud computing, data and IoT can yield tools that satisfy Call for Code’s goals. IBM is enabling coders by providing direct access to programmer resources including code patterns and tech talks.

Four universities – Columbia, MIT, RPI and Syracuse – joined Call for Code’s competitive University Hackathon Weekend September 15-16. Preregistered coders met up at each university, where representatives from IBM and disaster subject matter experts outlined the challenge and turned the participants loose to pick projects and start coding. This event ran concurrently with a virtual Hackathon and a live event in Kerala, India, focused on the same challenge. Call for Code’s Twitter feed shared ideas, progress and suggestions to hackers.

A two-person team of RPI students worked for 24 hours on an app that first responders could use to help them find buildings where people need rescuing or that could serve as shelters. "I didn't really expect to work the full 24 hours and then we kind of got more excited about the project than we initially thought we would and really got into it," said Linus Koepfler, who worked on the app with fellow student Matthew Brown.

Since the competition’s beginning, 300 Call for Code events in 50 cities have generated entries, including more than 100 from Caribbean developers, who live in locations frequently beset by hurricanes and flooding. Hackers have until September 28 to polish and submit their apps. Each sponsoring location will choose one winner, who will win $750 and a year’s worth of IBM Cloud credits. A team of eminent technologists will judge entries, selecting the application they consider will have the greatest impact. The Global Prize event and concert is slated for October 29, 2019, in San Francisco.

The United Nations Human Rights Office and the American Red Cross are charitable partners for the 2018 Call for Code project. Each year the project will select a different significant challenge for its focus.