The 24-hour countdown is on as more than 200 students code for a cause.

They worked together to develop digital solutions to problems caused by natural disasters, with a focus on preparedness.

It’s a theme that hits close to home for Mallory Gaspard, who lived through hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Using her experience, she and her team coded a program that would put the right people in the right place during natural disasters.

“That was the inspiration behind the project, trying to organize these volunteers geographically to where the resources are,” she said.

As the southeastern U.S. coast is inundated with rain from Hurricane Florence, the teams set about developing a program that would turn tweets in to SOS messages.

"Every second there are hundreds of tweets coming out specifically about hurricane Florence and we thought that we could leverage that existing data to help us find people that need help," said competitor Adrian Collado.

There was a sense of coding comradery throughout the day. The competition has an open platform, meaning anyone can log on and contribute.

At the end of the 24 hours, they will walk away with some pretty cool prizes not to mention the grand prize of $200,000 in October.