iRain app

iRain is the first global real-time crowd-sourced rainfall observation system developed through a joint research project by scientists at the Center for Hydrometeorology & Remote Sensing (CHRS, http://chrs.web.uci.edu) at the University of California, Irvine, and the Integrated Media Systems Center (IMSC, http://imsc.usc.edu) at the University of Southern California.

iRain consists of a database server, an application server and mobile apps for smartphones and tablets using iOS or Android.
iRain supports both public rain observation and on-demand requests through tasks. Tasks can be posted to iRain from users’ phones or via a web portal. Thereafter the tasks will be crowd-sourced among available nearby workers queried by advanced geographical techniques. When a task is completed by a worker, its result is automatically reported to the server for quality control before sending to the requester. The on-demand crowd-sourced data is considered as private data of the requester.

iRain is expected to be a useful resource for both the public and research community, especially for improving the quality of real-time satellite precipitation observation, eg. G-WADI PERSIANN-CCS GeoServer (http://chrs.web.uci.edu).