Inspiration
We got our inspiration from droughts because we live in Texas, and Texas often has long periods with a lack of rainfall, making the city place water restrictions.
What it does
The Climate and Droughts website displays information about droughts, their impacts, and ways to prevent them. It also includes a simulator to display drought data (by DSCI) for each county in Texas by week since 2000. This is also meant to display droughts, their severity, and their patterns.
How we built it
We built the website using a mix of regular HTML/CSS and React. Because there were only two of us working on the project, we needed to divide the research and tasks, however, we were each more comfortable with different website-making programs. To solve this, we divided the research made partial websites, and put them together at the end.
Challenges we ran into
We ran into many challenges throughout the process. While working on the simulator, an issue was how to manage a large amount of data, and how to display all of that data in a map. We also had some compilation errors when merging the websites, because some of the compilers flagged issues differently.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
For the simulation, I was proud of how I managed to get all of the data to display correctly in each county over such an extended time and smooth transition. Because of how React functions, managing state variables poses a challenge when pulling large amounts of data. For a while, I didn't think that it would be possible to get it all running correctly, but I ended up figuring it out and I felt very accomplished.
What we learned
Throughout the process, we learned a lot about both programming and droughts. Before working on the project, we knew about droughts, but we didn't know as many action steps that could be taken to lessen the effects. Programming-wise, I (Olivia) learned how to host a website, which I had never done before.
What's next for Climate and Droughts
Next for Climate and Droughts will add more information and research and add more data to the simulator. Right now it is limited because the true effects of climate change on droughts cannot be seen in full on such a small scale. The website can also include more examples of real-world impacts that drought has had. Overall, the goal of the project is to spread awareness of droughts and their cyclical nature but also to show people micro-scale actions they can take to help conserve water. In the future, Climate and Droughts will continue to strive toward this goal in any way it can.
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