Apulaster 13

Brescia | Drones and Satellites for Urban Development

PLATFORM11

High-Level Project Summary

We created a digital platform that allows authorities to check in real-time the needs of human settlements. In order to do that, information from NASA's satellites and drones are collected and leveraged, providing accurate details about the status of a specific territory.

Link to Project "Demo"

https://youtu.be/Y0ce0RxBA-U

Link to Final Project

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/11xb7VO2HZJe2YgijL9nOk4ts1V_j3kSq?usp=sharing

Detailed Project Description

A great challenge of our times consists in gradually improving the state of urban spaces, facing the needs of local populations. Therefore, decision-makers need to have at their disposal organized and reliable data, capable of accurately informing them about the issues of a specific territory. If this goal is achieved, efficient urban development plans may be put in place in order to solve these problems.

As Apulaster 13, we came up with an idea to help tackle the disorganization of data. To be precise, a huge amount of data regarding many urban settlements' critical issues is nowadays collected, but it's rough and fragmented. This information mainly comes from satellite imagery, which provides knowledge, as an example, about air quality, land consumption ratio, green coverage, and so on. Moreover, unmanned aerial vehicles and drones are more and more exploited in order to supply high resolution and almost real-time information which may become extremely useful in developing urban projects. These advanced technologies can also work with already existing infrastructures, especially CCTV cameras, allowing wider coverage and access to really tight spaces.

First of all, we focused on identifying the most critical issues that a human settlement could present. We were able to split them into three main categories:

primary needs: clean water and electricity availability, safe and adequate housing, healthcare, and security.
secondary needs: education, public transportation means, air quality, and green coverage.
other needs.

Our main goal is to put these new technologies at the service of public administrations (and indirectly of citizens). In order to achieve this, we created a website to store all data gathered by drones and satellites: an easy and intuitive platform available for consultation that helps in making important decisions concerning the urban development of the roughest neighborhoods.

The primary needs are the main issues that we decided to tackle, especially because we think that they are the most urgent problems that a human settlement can face.

Water coverage: drones traveling throughout the cities can identify and map all possible public water sources available in a certain spatial range. Combined with the consultation of data about the density of the population, we can suggest an approach to solve the lack of water.

House durability: by connecting with the database we can identify the soil composition of a specific area and, thanks to that, our drones could find the most dangerous zones to build on and, consequently, the houses more exposed to collapse. To achieve this task, drones can exploit their cameras in order to underline particular defects of buildings.

Electricity coverage: drones can track down wires or electrical meters and warn the authorities. They can also detect damaged infrastructures such as high voltage pylons. Moreover, drones helped by satellites can measure the by nigh lighting of an area, suggesting possible solutions or simply alerting the authorities in case of malfunctions.

Sanitary coverage: in addition to the mapping of hospitals and pharmacies around the city, drones can estimate the average time needed by an ambulance to reach a certain position, giving an idea of the sanitary coverage in that area.

They can also show photographs and videos of how different zones deal with waste management and how this affects hygiene and general health conditions.

Social security: this topic is strictly correlated to many different and relevant issues. First of all, the police coverage: with the same approach described earlier for ambulances, drones can estimate which zones are lack police control. The same method is applicable to firemen and any other security forces a neighborhood might need. Security not only involves lighting (which we already discussed above) but also road quality, which could be estimated by our drones through a detailed mapping of the street network or even through pictures and videos of damaged or obstructed roads. Last but not least, they would be able to map different zones at different times of the day to understand if a group of people are just inhabitants of wanderers/homeless (always in the respect of privacy).

The platform also deals with other kinds of needs regarding urban development. Green spaces are gaining more and more relevance nowadays and it’s not a gamble to say that they could become a primary need in the next years. Our drones could map the zones lacking parks and trees and even measure the CO2 concentration of those zones. Furthermore, our platform would cooperate with important start-ups such as Treedom or Forest to plant trees and populate cities with green areas. Thanks to their cameras, they could also supervise the already existing parks, tracking down waste left by citizens and mapping the trash bins present in that park to suggest to authorities if more bins are needed.

With the aim of making this information easily accessible, our platform would generate a qualitative rank, suggesting in which areas authorities should intervene first and which solutions would be suitable for those situations. In case of a more accurate investigation, every topic is linked to the main database, easy and fast to consult. In addition, the platform can also redirect to crowdfunding and petition websites.

We care about underlining that our drones always operate in total respect of privacy. Humankind and machines must collaborate to overcome difficulties and enhance citizens' social welfare, not undermining their freedom.

The strength of this idea comes from the great power of today’s technologies, which allow us not only to gather an incredible amount of data but most importantly to access and update them in a very short period. The outcome is a great speed of execution and a concrete awareness of the issues involving a specific area.

We strongly believe that technology and people can make the dream work. If we really want to make urban spaces more inclusive and sustainable, we need to operate and cooperate on different fronts at the same time, so we ask you: what is more suitable than drones? Bet you can’t answer so quickly.

Space Agency Data

Since our entire project is based on the manipulation of big amounts of data, the resources made available by NASA have been essentials for our work. The wide range of issues touched by our project requires as much information as possible, especially the ones regarding the environment and the Earth observations made by satellites. The “NASA Air Quality Data” source has been fundamental to give us an idea about pollution and how drones could communicate information about this topic. The “Earth Observations Toolkit for Sustainable Cities and Human Settlements” and the “ESA EO Catalogue” provided us a clearer view about the eleventh SDG goal and how to approach it. Another incredible work is the ALOS World 3D map that showed us the real potential of satellites nowadays, giving us the idea of a large scale gathering of data.

Hackathon Journey

NASA Space App experience is always a challenging and intense moment for us. Having just two days to choose a challenge, set up an idea, and present it makes this hackathon really tough. But it’s this trait that makes the Space App challenge so fun and interesting: it allows teams to work in a relaxed space to make them give their best. People know each other, learn how to work against time and how to think big, confronting big and fascinating issues regarding our future selves. This challenge makes us aware of the relevance we as young people have these days, being the new generation that could start a new era of space exploration.

The challenge related to the SDG goals has been really inspiring for different reasons. Firstly, we thought that neighborhoods improvements and urban plans are an urgent issue nowadays. More and more people live in terrible conditions, lacking the basic needs that every human being should have. Another factor that drove us towards this challenge is the use of drones and UAVs. In other words, looking for a way of exploiting new technologies is a big deal to us.

In order to approach a miscellaneous challenge like this one, the first step was brainstorming about any idea that came to our mind concerning how drones could be used and which are the biggest issues that a city could face. After that, we tried to figure out which was the most suitable solution to integrate technology and people's needs, and this is the moment when we decided to create a digital platform available for authorities and public administration. Our goal was to create a tool that could help the people who have the executing power to highlight where the real problems are and how to fight them.