IRIS: Global Disaster Dashboard

A real-time spatial intelligence platform that tracks and visualizes global natural disasters and humanitarian crises using live telemetry and a 3D WebGL interface.

Overview

IRIS (Interactive Regional Intelligence System) is designed to aggregate, normalize, and visualize concurrent streams of disaster data.

Core Features

• Real-Time Telemetry Streaming: Implemented a persistent WebSocket connection, injecting live global events instantly into the frontend state.
• Hardware-Accelerated 3D WebGL Globe: A custom-built Three.js sphere with dynamic spatial coordinate mapping, orbit controls, and automated camera targeting.
• Heuristic Advisory Engine: An automated spatial analysis pipeline that calculates estimated impact radii and generates localized, practical public safety advisories based on disaster severity and classification.

Future Features to be Implemented

• Spatial Data Persistence: Transition from stateless, in-memory processing to PostgreSQL with the PostGIS extension to enable temporal scrubbing, historical querying, and heat-map generation over time.
• Autonomous Reconnaissance Routing: Integrate pathfinding algorithms to dynamically calculate and visualize optimal, safe flight paths for UAVs or drones navigating around active hazard zones and severe weather systems.

Architecture & Tech Stack

Frontend Pipeline

• React 18 (Vite)
• Three.js & React Three Fiber / Drei (3D Rendering & Camera Control)
• Tailwind CSS v4 (Utility-first styling & UI layer)
• TanStack React Query (Asynchronous state management & caching)

Backend Pipeline

• Python 3 / FastAPI (Asynchronous API & WebSocket Manager)
• Uvicorn (ASGI Web Server)
• Asyncio (Concurrent background tasks & event injection)

Data Ingestion Sources

• USGS API: Seismological activity and global earthquakes.
• NASA FIRMS: Near real-time active fire data and thermal anomalies.
• ReliefWeb (UN OCHA): Active humanitarian crises and severe weather events.

Local Setup & Installation

Prerequisites

• Node.js (v18+)
• Python (v3.10+)
• A free NASA FIRMS API Key

1. Backend Configuration

Navigate to the backend directory and set up your Python environment:

cd backend
python -m venv venv

# Activate the virtual environment
# On Windows:
venv\Scripts\activate
# On Mac/Linux:
source venv/bin/activate

# Install dependencies (Assuming a requirements.txt exists)
pip install fastapi uvicorn websockets httpx