Positioned four out of 51 submissions in World Bank’s “Apps for Climate Competition,” a Kenyan startup called Third Dimension has vowed to take the top prize.
Third Dimension is a mobile phone application that visualizes data on rainfall and temperature from as far as 1920 to current date. It also offers predictions of future climate to as far as 2099.
The application shows rainfall and temperature changes for any country in the world.
Users select they country they want to view from a list of countries the app provides, or from the world map subdivided by country or basin. By touching the subdivision, the map shows the rainfall and temperature patterns.
Users can also view the climatic changes by watching the weather performance over a number of seasons, including long rains and short rains or whether the rainfall intensity has increased or decreased over a specific period.
The app has a three-dimensional graph that depicts the conventional January to December graph that shows the weather patterns across the years specific months.
Gerald Kibugi and Trizah Chege, both of Élan Telemedia Ltd, say the app took three months to design, develop and test after learning about the World Bank Climate Competition.
Gerald says they went through the world bank data and researched on climate changes, consulted and began the project.
Founded by Gerald Kibugi in 2008, Élan Telemedia Ltd has since and developed over 100 mobile applications for both corporate and the mass market on platforms like IPhone, Android, Blackberry and J2M.
“At the moment we have two applications that are part of 50 semi finalists of this year’s regional mobile apps and developers competition by Pivot East,” said Kibugi.
One of the company’s application called Shoppers’ Delight won the Android Developer Challenge last year.
The World Bank Competition is a result of the World Bank’s Open Data initiative aimed at promoting new data and tools on climate change as well as promoting the usage of climate change data.
The competition uses public voting to determine the usability and popularity of the applications developed. The 26-day polling started on April 1, 2012.
