AI Based Wildfire Prevention System wins Rep. Andy Biggs’s 2021 Congressional App Challenge in Arizona’s Fifth District

Rep. Andy Biggs has named Prisha Shroff from Hamilton High School as the winner of the 2021 Congressional App Challenge in Arizona’s Fifth District.

 

When asked what inspired the creation of AI Based Wildfire Prevention System, the student said, “I was inspired to solve the problem of wildfires because I had witnessed a raging wildfire when we were driving home from Los Angeles. The huge wildfire was destroying everything in its path, and we had to turn back. One of our friends even had to evacuate their house. We saw the devastating impacts on people’s lives and health. The fire lasted for 86 days causing 1,032,648 acres of land burnt and 935 structures destroyed. Due to this experience, I was highly motivated to find a solution to prevent wildfires.  Furthermore, I learned that forests account for more than 31% of the world’s land surface and contribute to the continuity of the ecological balance. Forests store large amounts of carbon. When they burn, they release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere (about 8 billion tons annually), which contributes to climate change. In the last few years, severe wildfires have besieged nations around the world, affecting every continent. As the world continues to get hotter and drier, wildfires will become even more intense globally. Therefore, there is an urgent need for a solution to solve the global wildfire problem.”

The 2021 Congressional App Challenge yielded 2,101 fully functioning apps. After eighteen months of disruptions to educational cadences for students everywhere, the Congressional App Challenge came roaring back with 7,174 students registering for this year’s competition. All told, 340 Members of Congress hosted Congressional App Challenges in their districts across 50 states, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Mariana Islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Washington, D.C.

The Congressional App Challenge is an official initiative of the U.S. House of Representatives, where Members of Congress host contests in their districts for middle school and high school students, encouraging them to learn to code and inspiring them to pursue careers in computer science. Each participating Member of Congress selects a winning app from their district, and each winning team is invited to showcase their winning app to Congress during our annual #HouseOfCode festival. The program is a public-private partnership made possible through funding from Omidyar Network, AWS, theCoderSchool, Facebook, Replit, Accenture, and others.

The 2022 Congressional App Challenge will launch in June of 2022, and eligible students can pre-register for the competition now.