VIDEO: UH-Hilo tech team ready for Russia, world championship

Big Island Video News

Jul 8, 2013

STORY SUMMARY

HILO, Hawaii – Team P’oliahu – the computer science students at University of Hawaii at Hilo and winners of the Microsoft’s Image Cup U.S.…

HILO, Hawaii – Team P’oliahu – the computer science students at University of Hawaii at Hilo and winners of the Microsoft’s Image Cup U.S. Finals – is now off to St. Petersburg, Russia for the Worldwide Finals, which begin July 11.

Mike Purvis, Wallace Hamada, Ryder Donahue and Kayton Summers have been making the media rounds ever since winning the national championship held in Silicon Valley this past May.

The team’s winning concept is an app called “Help me Help”, and it is designed to help first responders locate hazards during an emergency situation.

The team spoke about the concept – and the crucial pivot away from an application about locating invasive species on Mauna Kea – at a recent reception held at the university.

Mike Purvis

“We said … I think we should do what we’ve always talked about doing, which is change our entire idea around and make it apply to a disaster response. … It would give us a better chance at the U.S. finals. So, that basically meant staying up past midnight for at least two weeks straight. Way more work than we thought it was going to be. But we knew that was a really our only shot at the U.S. finals.”

In advance of the departure for the worldwide competition, the university released some video of the team pitching the idea to Hawaii County Civil Defense.

Mike Purvis and Team Poliahu meet with Hawaii County Civil Defense, introducing the app "Help me Help". Courtesy University of Hawaii. — Mike Purvis and Team Poliahu meet with Hawaii County Civil Defense, introducing the app “Help me Help”. Courtesy University of Hawaii.

Darryl Oliveira

“Getting live or real time photographs as well as the geographic information — the lat, long, addresses — and then tagging it with a particular hazard identifier, would give us this tremendous information of what’s occurring in the community during and post of disaster. And then be able to quantify that so that we can address the resource needs in those areas.”

Darren Rosario

“Being able to see the incident as it’s evolving while we are still responding will give the incident commander valuable information to set up his action plan on how to mitigate that incident. Such things as the size of the fire or maybe the type of auto accident that is involved, how many patients that we may be having to respond to.”

Mike Purvis

“Meeting with civil defense has just been amazing. We had a meeting this past Monday, and there’s just an incredible amount of the public servants there that were interested in taking up a great majority of their Monday’s during the weekdays to listen to us and offer feedback. we just have had an incredible past three months doing things we never thought we would do. We want to continue going
forward with this.”

This year’s competition features 86 teams of students from 69 countries competing in six categories for more than $1 million in cash and prizes. The UH Hilo squad will compete against 31 other teams in the Innovation Competition category that includes entries from China, Japan, Korea, Russia and the United Kingdom. Purvis said the team’s speech, decorations and slideshow are all being tailored to showcase Hawaii Island.