Tailored UV Index Forecast for Beaches
Problem: Promoting UV Awareness
If you want to be a part of a successful federal government social media campaign, consider hacking EPA’s UV Index. The UV Index, a numeric index of the strength of cancer-causing UV rays from the sun, is a forecast produced by the National Weather Service. The forecast data are run through EPA’s Envirofacts and put out to the public through our app and widget. The app has been featured on nationwide media and TV.
Building on the success of the UV Index app, develop a Android widget that normally displays real time weather information but switches over to the UV Index (and provides an alert and recommendations) when it detects that you are within the vicinity (5-mile radius) of the beach AND if the forecast exceeds Moderate on the UV index scale (https://www.epa.gov/sunsafety/uv-index-scale-0) for the location provided by the phone.
Challenge: Display UV Index as an Android widget
Leverage the attached beach zip codes to determine if the user of the phone is within the vicinity (5-mile radius) of a beach.
Develop an Android widget that can be added to a phone that displays the UV Index and tips based on the criteria specified in the problem statement above.
Overview of tasks that need to be completed for this challenge:
- Leverage the attached beach zip codes to determine if the user of the phone is within the vicinity (5-mile radius) of a beach.
- Develop an Android widget that can display the weather and UV Index based on the attached APIs.
- Incorporate the specified parameters in the program statement.
Additional Information/Data Sources:
Envirofacts provides a RESTful data service API for retrieving UV Index data thru web services. The information is searchable by ZIP Code and city, state, making it useful for any organization, either local or national. Users do not have to leave your site to see the forecast. The UV Index Overview provides additional information on the data.
Weather Data API:
https://www.wunderground.com/weather/api/d/docs
Related Open Source Project on GitHub:
https://github.com/arminha/wor
https://github.com/bolming/
UVI data via the National Weather Service:
There are two places to get the gridded UV Index forecasts:
The 0.5×0.5 degree global data set is here:
ftp://ftp.ncep.noaa.gov/pub/data/nccf/com/hourly/prod/
The current and yesterday’s UVI forecast directories are there.
The other place is via the NWS NDGD (National Digital Guidance Database):
http://www.nws.noaa.gov/ndgd/
UV Index files:
ftp://tgftp.nws.noaa.gov/SL.us008001/ST.opnl/DF.gr2/DC.ndgd/GT.dnggfs/AR.conus/
The UV Index is in a binary format called GRIB2. You will need a decoder to read these files. Here is the NWS web page for the National Digital Guidance Database (NDGD):
http://www.nws.noaa.gov/ndgd/technical.shtml
This page has links to ‘supporting documentation’. To get the DeGRIB software go here:
http://www.nws.noaa.gov/mdl/degrib/download.php
There are packages for both Windows and Linux. From this page there are links to data access and tutorials to install and run the software.
Zip file containing zip codes for beaches across the United States.
Tailored UV Index Forecast for Beaches,