CRISiSLab at Joint Centre for Disaster Research at Massey University successfully hosted the CRISiSLab Challenge 2022 Final Demonstration Day! College students in the Wellington Region gathered at Massey University (Wellington campus) to show what they’ve accomplished in our original hands-on competition where they learned about ground motions, seismographs, data reading, alerting systems, coding and so much more.
We are extremely proud of all the students. We also feel very grateful for the CRISiSLab team, all the judges, our supporters and sponsors, especially Toka Tū Ake EQC, Resilience to Nature’s Challenges, and QuakeCoRE.
CRISiSLab Lead Dr Raj Prasanna opened the session with the support from Project Leader Dr Marion Lara Tan and Marketing Lead Alicia Cui with a lovely mihi Whakatau honouring Te Wiki o te Reo Māori following the advice of Kelvin Tapuke, and we received a touching response from a student representative. After a joyful but competitive quiz session, we had cheerful greetings from Raspberry Shake partners Mike and Gabriel joined online from the US. Our previous Ultimate Winners Ben Hong and Zade Viggers shared their fantastic work on the integrated ShakeMap which they developed since their internship with our CRISiSLab.
Students from Wellington High School, Te Kura Māori o Porirua, St Patrick’s College and Taita College have demonstrated their great effort and extraordinary skills to put smiles on everyone’s faces. Along with their supportive teachers, they deserve all the praise given such a challenging year. St Pat’s boys won the Endeavour Award with their humour and confidence. Team Taita won the Best Dashboard by perfectly showing the data and information from an alerting system. Te Kura Māori o Porirua won the Best Alerting Device again! Their visually stimulating and integrated sound alert featuring the Rūaumoko holding the earth has impressed the crowd. Wellington High School won the Ultimate Winners this year with their exceptional coding skills, clear and engaging presentations, and the fancy drone that takes off when triggered by our simulated earthquake data.
Our CRISiSLab Challenge 2022 attracted quite a bit of media attention and got featured on One News! And Toka Tū Ake EQC also made a fantastic video.
What’s next?? CRISiSLab Challenge 2023! This is CRISiSLab’s initiative to make sustainable and influential engagement with schools for more students to get into science and technology to solve problems in disasters. Stay tuned!
