Over Mijn Dak 2
The project
Many people experience air traffic disruption but do not always file an official complaint with bezoekbas.nl (BAS - Bewoners Aanspreekpunt Schipol) for various reasons. Some people find it too much work, too difficult, or feel it is pointless. As a result, some do not report anything at all, or perhaps only once a year, while others report several times a month. As a result, BAS data does not reflect the actual air traffic disruption.
Our project aims to simplify the process of submitting aircraft nuisance reports, ensuring that data at BAS more accurately reflects reality. To achieve this, our solution allows users to search for flights configuring their own altitude and timespan. Then, our flight tracker service finds relevant flights and detects disturbances near user locations. Additionally, our project automatically monitors disturbances on a daily basis and generates complaint candidates for noisy periods. These are sent to users via email, allowing them to submit a complaint with a single click. Finally, our solution alerts users who file an excessive number of complaints and are approaching supercomplainer status.
The customer
Our client for this project was Stichting Omgeving Zonder Vlieghinder (OZV). This organization represents residents affected by aircraft noise around Schipol Airport. OZV works to improve living conditions for people experiencing nuisance from low-flying and frequent aircraft traffic by facilitating complaint registration.
Our collaboration with OZV was smooth and straightforward. We had bi-weekly online meetings throughout the semester, and weekly meetings in the last few weeks of the project. During these meetings, we discussed our progress in development, any issues and obstacles that we needed help with, and we asked questions to further clarify some of the client’s requirements. Besides regular meetings, we kept in touch in writing via Mattermost, where we shared files related to the project, planned the meetings, and asked questions that came up between meetings.
The team
Our team consisted of six students, including a Scrum master and a product owner to ensure effective project management. We divided tasks based on existing competencies and difficulty level. More complicated tasks and PR reviews were done by team members who had more experience in software development, while less experienced members were responsible for less advanced, isolated tasks. More specifically, we defined the current tasks and responsibilities in the beginning of each two-week sprint, which was also reflected on our SCRUM board.
The most significant challenge we encountered was submitting complaints to BAS. Originally, we accessed BAS’ submission website directly on behalf of the user, pretending to be a real user. However, halfway through the project BAS put protections in place against this. Our clients communicated with BAS to resolve this, which then prompted us to restructure the project. As a team, we are proud of our flexibility and ability to overcome this obstacle, and our great communication with our client during this period of uncertainty.
The technologies
- Svelte: framework in which we built the application
- TypeScript: backend of the application
- Rust: flight tracker service
- PostgreSQL: open-source relational database system
- Docker: application containerization platform