High-Level Project Summary
Developed with the objective of detecting, monitoring and quantifying the pollution caused by plastics in seas and oceans, the Maps Ocean Plastics was created, an open source web application that allies itself to the CYGNSS AI, capturing data from it and sending accurate results to its database. It also has informative topics about the marine ecosystem, the impacts of pollution, and tips on how to reduce the consumption of plastics, as well as a "report me" button where citizens can make reports of places polluted by plastics, as a method of complementing the web application's database.This system proposes to assist more efficiently in the removal of debris from the oceans.
Link to Project "Demo"
Link to Final Project
Detailed Project Description
Plastic waste is one of the main aggravating factors to marine health, causing pollution and impacting the environmental balance. It is estimated that eight million tons of plastic waste are found annually in the oceans, the smallest part is transformed into small particles known as microplastics, which have in their composition petroleum derivatives, the agent that causes pollution.
These numbers cause alarming impacts both on marine health and on human health as a secondary consumer.
Aiming to eradicate plastic waste pollution in the seas and oceans we created Map Ocean Plastics, an open source web application that will provide monitoring, detection and quantification capabilities of plastic pollution, using already existing remote sensing data. Based on recent studies by space scientists at the University of Michigan and through the readings of the Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS), in particular the satellite readings of the roughness of the ocean surface, since this roughness seems to be correlated to the presence of microplastics, the application will capture data sent by CYGNSS and make it available for public access, so that it is possible to map the debris and consequently enable quick and effective action to clean up the sites.
In addition, within the web application you will find:
- Global map with the records;
- Informative topics, aimed at the population, with content such as: Marine Ecosystem, Plastic Garbage, Impacts of pollution, ways to reduce the consumption of plastics in everyday life, and the topic Reduce, Reuse & Recycle;
- "Report me" button, a space where citizens fill out a form about plastic-polluted marine spots, to feed the database;
- Help (contact us);
- Home (Who are we?);
- About Map Ocean Plastics.
Space Agency Data
This project used data from the Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System, with the objective of combining both projects to find a solution to the pollution of the world's oceans and seas
Hackathon Journey
Participating in the event was, for the whole team, an extremely important challenge, since the team has students from the biology course who are constantly studying how to mitigate the effects caused by garbage in general that is dumped in the environment.
References
Tags
#ocean #plastics #solution
Global Judging
This project has been submitted for consideration during the Judging process.