Life-saving projects

Students of Izmir University of Economics (IUE) took action in response to the increase in natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods and fires in our country and developed two projects that will contribute greatly to search and rescue operations. The young inventors, who have been working in two groups of 4 for about 6 months, have entered the radar of national and international companies with the projects they prepared with the help of artificial intelligence.

Eren Özcan, Berra Beşer, Ezgi Avcı and Bahar Kaya, fourth-year students of IUE Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, have reached the final stage to develop a special analysis program that will classify social media posts made after a disaster through artificial intelligence and notify AFAD immediately. The Post-Disaster Action Project (DASAP) was accepted to the ‘Researcher Access’ program of OpenAI, the company that developed the world-famous artificial intelligence robot ChatGPT.

WILL DETECT OPEN ROADS

Atakan Kafkas, Enis A. Koza, Şükrü Çakır and Ege Abalı, who study in the same department and class, attracted attention with their mobile application named ‘PATHFINDER’. The IUE team, which will prepare a mobile application that detects the most open roads by analyzing drone images taken after a disaster with artificial intelligence and can be used without internet in ambulances and fire brigades, was accepted to the ‘Suit’ program by HAVELSAN to support students.

WILL BE FULLY READY IN MAY

Asst. Prof. Dr. Ayça Kumluca Topallı from IUE Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, who guides the students during the project process, said that the work continues uninterruptedly and that the projects are finished with their outlines and will be completely ready in May. Pointing out that the projects are low cost and easy to implement, Asst. Prof. Dr. Topallı said, “Unfortunately, we are more exposed to natural disasters with the effect of global climate change. When we think of disasters, the first thing that comes to mind is earthquakes, but we have also had serious struggles with floods and fires recently. Together with our students, we wanted to develop practical projects that would both increase disaster awareness and have high applicability. I can say that we have been successful in this.”

INFORMATION WILL BE REDIRECTED

Sharing detailed information about the projects, Asst. Prof. Dr. Topallı said, “After the earthquake, we used social media platforms very actively to communicate and get information. We shared information about loved ones who were lost or from whom we had no news, on social media. Together with our students, we thought that a system that could quickly analyze the information shared on social media, make location discrimination, and bring together similar information thanks to artificial intelligence would make our work easier. Based on this idea, we developed the project called DASAP. DASAP is an algorithm that analyzes social media correspondence using ‘natural language processing’ and ‘large language models’. In short, our project envisages a structure that can analyze social media posts and instantly transmit them to AFAD”.

FASTER TRANSPORTATION

Asst. Prof. Dr. Topallı continued as follows: “Our other project is a mobile application that can have a direct positive impact on the post-disaster response process. The application named ‘PATHFINDER’ instantly analyzes drone images taken from above and detects open roads. In this way, it helps the ambulance or fire brigade to reach the scene faster. We also made use of artificial neural networks and graph theory while creating our project. Of course, our existing projects can be further developed and improved.” Asst. Prof. Dr. Topallı also pointed out that the projects are a significant experience for the students and congratulated them for their devoted work.