When Rene Molina I saw on the news the devastation that DANA had caused in Valencia, he did not hesitate to walk to the V-30 highway to lend a hand to the affected residents. “One of my friends’ garage was completely flooded,” he says on the other end of the phone. Benetusser.
He is one of those young people from the “glass generation” who does not give up in the face of adversity. Since last Friday, he has been collaborating with cleaning and assistance tasks at CatarrojaIn AlfafarIn Sedavi. But, in addition to being one of those thousands of volunteers who dedicate themselves to helping their compatriots without asking for anything in return, he is also the ideologue of a useful tool called YourCarDana it helps thousands of people to recover their cars, displaced by the floods.
The idea came to him as soon as he arrived on the ground. Molina, of 18 years oldis originally from AntasIn Almeriabut he is studying in the second year of mechanical Engineering in the Polytechnic University of Valencia. “I was very shocked to see the dealerships destroyed, the cars thrown on the highway, piled up. I thought it was going to be complicated for the owners to look for their cars, who would like to get them back as quickly as possible. Whether it was because whether they are still working or because they have valuable goods inside. Or simply because they had affection for him. »
The light bulb then went on, and as he was in the field and his knowledge of web programming was insufficient to develop a useful interface in a short time and with few resources at his disposal, he decided to call Juanfran Solerhis teacher Baccalaureate at the Almeria Institute Vera. He was a web programmer and made a big impression on her. They were the 2:15 a.m. Fridaybut he picked up the phone to tell her what he had been thinking. By midday Saturday, Soler already had the website active. “It had to be work against the clockbecause time is our greatest enemy. The more the hours pass, the more cars circulate. »
This is how TuCocheDana was born, a system for recording and consulting vehicles lost due to torrential rains. Each user who stroll through the streets of Valencia and find a vehicle, you can register license plate and automatically detect geolocation where you found it. If someone is looking for your car, enter data of your registration and see if a volunteer has already registered it.
“It is a form that asks for your license plate or your frame, because some cars have it illegible,” explains Professor Juanfran Soler in statements to SPANISH. “It takes the location directly from the mobile phone’s GPS, the city, the street and allows you to capture an image. If the volunteer who signs up has the time and can take a photo, this helps the user to present it to the insurance. It takes 20 seconds. Although the only mandatory thing you need to enter is registration and location“.
The system developed by student And teacher It was a success. In less than a week, more than 1,400 carsand the number continues to increase. “This morning a crane operator moved 100 vehicles and he immediately gave me the license plates, which I automatically uploaded to the database.
Juanfran Soler, the professor from Almería who helped René Molina realize his idea of creating TuCocheDana.
Juanfran Soler And Rene Molina They never stop innovating against the clock. “We also have a tool Telegrama bot, which helps you if your vehicle is not on the web. You can enter the license plate and this tool will evaluate, every 60 minutes, whether anyone has already registered your car. Sends you an alert. And, in addition to the website, we are working with collaborators to develop this week an application for Android and iOS“.
100,000 cars affected
Around 70 cranes And 100 soldiers coordinated with the Emergency military unit (EMU) try to find and move the more than 100,000 cars affected by the devastating DANA which, for the moment, has cost the lives of 219 people and keeps a hundred still missing. Some 70 camps have been set up – open spaces like football fields or open-air parking lots – to which vehicles are transported. However, as local sources point out, It will take between one and two months to recover the remains of all the vehicles.
“The situation is very complicated, so for several days we have been work with official organizations», Continues René Molina. “His own Cécopi (Integrated Emergency Coordination Center) contacted us four days ago because they were going to discuss the issue of license plates. They asked us to make a data dump so they can implement it in their own tools.
“We are going to keep it in parallel anyway,” continues the 18-year-old. “Right here, where I am, There are around 500 cars on the Benetússer football field.. We need the license plate records from the depots to be able to upload them to our registry, because at the moment almost everything it depends on the mobilization of the people“.
For now, Soler and Molina remember that TuCocheDana is a website – and soon a application– completely volunteer And altruistic. In their legal notices, they assure that has no advertising and he won’t have them either. Both did it out of “solidarity with their neighbors” in Valencia. René, acting on the ground; Juanfran, exploiting all his knowledge of computer programming in record time.
“You put yourself in a situation and think it only happened 300 miles away. This could have happened to any of us. The minimum is to help however we can, on site or electronically, as is my case,” concludes Soler.
