Volunteer Project: Better Bay Alliance

The newly formed non-profit Better Bay Alliance (BBA) is interested in working with URI grad students to help create a web page and/or app for one of the organization’s new boating safety initiatives.  The organization’s board members believe this would be a great project for CS grad students in the spring 2021 semester either on a volunteer basis to gain experience, or, for CS students, to earn some credits to earn directed study credit, under a faculty member who would supervise and would deem this work worthy of graduate credit.  It would also be a great way for URI to be a part of this initiative which we already have significant stakeholder buy-in from USCG, DEM, and other orgs.

 In addition, the outline below articulates a bit more detail about what we’re looking for.  The BBA has a senior software developer on our board as an advisory member who has volunteered to oversee the student project and refine the requirements before beginning.

Please send resume and email expression of interest to Dave Lussier, 1st Vice President, Better Bay Alliance, 

dlussier@seacorp.com.  Mr. Lussier, who is also president of SEACORP, a RI systems engineering firm.

Webpage features:

  1. A page of buttons (HTML links) to various resources including links to the following sub-pages:
    1. Local weather info (general weather, tide tables, wind)
      1. Weather.com, usharbors.com, sailflow and/or dark sky
    2. Key safety briefings
      1. Thinking here is this link would take the viewer to a few different canned PowerPoint tutorials (that we would have to find on the web, refine, and build as we see fit) on subjects such as:
        1. Rules of the Road (RoR)
        2. Seamanship
        3. Piloting/Navigation
      2. Quiz (vision here is twofold) on RoR
        1. There could be some canned quiz/test info in the webpage allowing viewers to test themselves in an online quiz format of 10-50 questions on various topics and see how they do
        2. There could be a button to register a phone# so that the viewer has a weekly quiz question sent via text to their phone, without the answer, so they can reply to the multiple choice quiz question.  Upon replying with their answer, they would be told if they got it right or not.
    3. Links to educational resources related to marine safety
      1. Vision here is that a single page would be presented listing the logos of the various key orgs that offer boating safety related training such as USPS, USCG Aux, US Sailing, In-Command, Confident Captain
      2. When one of the above logos is clicked upon, it would take the viewer to a dedicated page that we create which all have the same format of info for each org and include data such as:
        1. List of available courses and syllabus for each
        2. Cost for courses and/or joining org
        3. Location of training or remote options
        4. Schedule for courses and level of certification
    4. Links to local clubs around the bay
      1. Yacht clubs
      2. Restaurants you can tie up to and dine (Boat House in Tiverton, several in EG, Barrington, Newport docks at $XX/ft/4hrs, etc)
    5. Local providers of marine services
      1. Boat yards/marinas
      2. Fuel locations and current prices for gas/diesel
      3. Crane/haul out
      4. Pump out stations/locations
  2. Calendar info page: includes events such as the following that can be viewed a month or week at a time, with filtering ability to focus on one topic area (regattas) or more, and ability to look forward thru the whole year for events such as/including:
    1. Major events such as sailing regattas
    2. Power rendezvous and other power boat events
    3. Kayak/SUP events
    4. Swim the Bay
    5. Poker Run
    6. Jazz/Folk festivals
    7. Fireworks
    8. Fishing tournaments
    9. Etc.

Mobile App Features:

  1. LIVE CHART
    1. Live nautical chart of Narragansett Bay: similar to South Bay Racing chart but with real current chart data from NOAA, with overlays including:
      1. Current events
        1. Marine Event Permits turned into Local Notices to Mariners (LNMs) by the USCG
          1. We are in discussions with USCG to get fresh LNM data and BBA to “digitize” key elements onto Live Chart
          2. Events could be graphic shaded overlays overlapping where appropriate
          3. Back end data entry form to be developed as part of Web App/USCG duty personnel may be willing to enter LNM data for us
        2. Potential to graphically “forward look” weeks ahead to see what the bay would look like with multiple events
      2. AIS
        1. Software engineering capable of importing live/free AIS data and overlay onto Live Chart
      3. Tides/Currents
        1. “Reach goal” to potentially have Live Chart include current tide/current overlay graphics
  2. Website Info
    1. Besides the above item 1 (LIVE CHART), the mobile app would be able to also view all the data on the BBA website above (calendar, etc), in ordinary mobile browser format, but the development and presentation of the website data is a function of the website production and not the mobile app production by a software developer (but they would work in concert)