Settlement Tracker

Lima | Space for Change

Settlement Tracker

High-Level Project Summary

Unplanned urbanization may not only lead to a lack of essential services such as healthcare, clean water, basic sanitation and transportation, but also damage to important ecosystems, especially those close to urban centers. That is why it’s essential to visualise, analyze and understand this issue. This project is a public web app that allows users to interactively visualize historical satellite imagery showing urban growth and settlement expansion with an emphasis on fragile ecosystems, protected habitats and archaeological sites. This project is aimed at decision makers, government officials and everyday citizens to bring attention to the impact of unplanned urban growth.

Link to Project "Demo"

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1HOpPreQtU0dSAt9kfQMr7ktOGcEd4eMc7hWtwRGWteM/edit?usp=sharing

Link to Final Project

https://andressanchez5.users.earthengine.app/view/settlement-tracker

Detailed Project Description

We leverage historical satellite imagery from the Landsat Program using Google Earth Engine (GEE). 

Data from government agencies regarding fragile ecosystems, protected habitats and archaeological sites are downloaded and processed in QGIS before they are uploaded to GEE to delimit areas of interest used to query satellite images. These images are used to create animations of the areas of interest and allow the user to detect possible settlement expansion and urban growth in close proximity. GEE allows the publication of projects through the Apps option, and using the User Interface commands, people will be able to select the areas they are interested in.


The program will be able to create animations similar to those from the Timelapse Repository from Google Earth Engine, however, it will be focused on fragile ecosystems.

The following video is an example of automatically-generated animations using satellite images available using GEE.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68kGhpS8LTY

Space Agency Data

We use data from the Landsat Program, a joint effort between the USGS and NASA, although other databases such as those from the Copernicus Programme by the ESA might be used as we further develop the project.

We try to take advantage of the almost 50 years of data from Landsat to help paint a better picture of urban growth.

Hackathon Journey

As a team, we had to learn how to search for reliable information and use new tools to increase our capabilities to take our project to the next phase. 


Our focus was centered on the problems that we have been seeing not only in our country, but in every part of the world, mainly in developing countries. Because of these problems, we thought that in order to solve a problem or find an answer, we need to be able to have a quick and efficient vision of how the areas were and how they are now. It should be noted that unplanned urban growth doesn't just imply building a house, but also damaging the area that is affected, especially if they are vulnerable or endemic ecosystems. For these reasons we believe in the importance of the development of our project to "see" the problem and think of an effective solution.


We would like to thank every guard and guide of the protected natural areas of our country, since it is thanks to them that these areas are kept in good condition and preserved.

References

Tags

#urbangrowth #remotesensing

Global Judging

This project has been submitted for consideration during the Judging process.

Space for Change

Marginalized communities are often disproportionately impacted by environmental hazards. Your challenge is to use NASA's Earth observation data to: 1) identify regions where such environmental injustice occurs, and 2) design implementable solutions that enable equitable outcomes.