High-Level Project Summary
In the last decade, countries around the world have been experiencing record-breaking temperatures. We observe that global warming has already caused and is still causing negative effects, such effects being irreversible in the time scale of people alive today. The T.O.F. Project does not present a solution for all problems, but collaborates to reduce the damage and preserve life as a whole, not only the preservation of human life, but also of all biodiversity present in the world today. With heat mapping, prevention guides, alerts, and calls to local NGOs, our project makes it possible to protect biodiversity here and now, while also impacting an entire future.
Link to Project "Demo"
Link to Final Project
Detailed Project Description
Importance of the project
In the last decade, countries around the world have been recording record high temperatures, with 2016 being known as the hottest year ever recorded, it is irrefutable to say that the effects of climate change are more present than ever.
The graph below, provided by NASA itself, shows us that for millennia there has never been such a high concentration of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere.
Source: NASA Climate
In the midst of a brutal fire season, right now California is fighting its heavy wave of wildfires that are putting natural properties at risk. We don't currently know the actual causes of the fires, but whether they are caused by lightning, intentional deforestation, or human-caused accidents, it is a fact that fires are burning longer and more frequently as the world warms up.
Source: NASA Earth Observatory
Due to climate change, part of the world is currently suffering from increasing heat waves and respectively, drought, wildfires, food shortages, and loss of major crops. Recent data from the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES) shows that the number of forest fires doubled between 1984 and 2015 in the western United States. To the south, more precisely in Brazil, where the research is from, data at the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) shows that in 2019, forest fires increased by 82% compared to the same period in 2018. Data from two days ago (09/30/2021) from the exact moment I wrote this article (10/02/2021) report that there were over 1000 locations with forest fire risks in Latin America alone.
Source: NASA Earth Observatory
To get a sense of how serious the problem really is, we reviewed the information on the varying types of land cover in South America:
Source: NASA Earth Observatory
With support from the infographic (first image) made available by NASA Earth Observatory we realize that even in a region where much of it is rainforest, with rainy weather and the presence of numerous rivers, we still have extremely high numbers in the last decade.
The solution:
Whenever mentioned about technology and data what comes to people's minds? Complexity, ease, practicality, incompatibility... After all, we live in the information age, but what do all the answers have in common? The final answer is time. Time to change, time to experience, time to enjoy the best of life, time to transform the world into a better place for the next generations.
With a simple and accessible interface, the application contains two types of registration, also being possible to use the application without the need to create an account.
The option as a guest allows the user to access the map and its data information.
Registered as an individual, the user has access to additional functions, such as "save location", where it is possible to save a certain location that is not your own, to receive alerts and news about that region.
We provide the option of registration for institutions and NGOs, allowing them to obtain the same information as normal users. However, by registering in the application, NGOs agree that they will receive alerts in their e-mails whenever a forest fire or a heat wave with potential risks appears in their region (city).
By consuming APIs from the Earth Observatory Natural Event Tracker (EONET - NASA) we filter and analyze each piece of data so that it is presented in a simple and informative way on a page intended for the dissemination of essential information only.
With such information, it is possible not only to become very well informed about current climate change, but also to enable and support scientific research by providing all our data sources, proprietary codes, used papers, and project design materials on the "About us" page.
Last but not least, we have the alerts system, having 3 different notification levels, making it possible to set up receipts also by email.
Made for this project.
The level 1 alert symbolizes a heat wave that is not harmful to biodiversity (this alert is deactivated by default, but can be activated in the settings.
The level 2 alert symbolizes a heat wave with potential harm to biodiversity.
The level 3 alert symbolizes a heatwave with the potential to damage forests, damage crops, or pollute the air.
The level 3 alert locates and alerts all local NGOs registered in the application about such a climate change. The alert system serves as a means of communication between the local community, enabling greater knowledge about the climate phenomena that surround them.
Each part of the project was developed with the agility that a user can have using the application in mind. With this idea in mind, we developed a useful, fast and easy to use application, making it possible to inform oneself through scientific data displayed in a trivial way for the user, saving time on each operation performed in the application. Time to be alive, time to be introspective.
Aiming at the prevention of biodiversity, the Project T.O.F. is not only a tracking tool, not only an alert tool, but time; time for hope for current and the future generations.
How we developed the project
The idea of alerting biodiversity risks is a very delicate subject, which is why we developed the logic and analysis of our algorithms based on studies already done.
Our API provides three different types of alerts, being an alert based on the last 12 months, an alert based on daily data and finally an alert based on the current thermal sensation. By averaging type 1, we arrive at an average value used for arid climate analysis calculations. Based on the average value, we pass from the API to the front-end whether such a location from the information has any health risk in the last few months, alerting you if so.
Using a metric based on HealthLine data, we set level 1 alerts for temperatures/thermal sensations ranging from 30°C to 35°C, level 2 for variation between 36°C to 39°C, and level 3 above 40°C.
Consuming data from NASA's Open Data platform, we analyze the effects of climate change as well as perform a Machine Learning model to predict global temperature in the coming years.
Using a dataset that makes data available since 1750, we achieve an accuracy of 80%.
For the analysis on pollution in the atmosphere, we took into account pollution data from Afghanistan, a country that has long suffered from high levels of pollution.
Using a dataset provided by OurWorldInData, we had access to the number of deaths caused by polluting materials.
Following our analysis, you can see that the number follows a pattern, but that there are always outliers.
Made for this project.
The analysis becomes more precise when we analyze the same data as a function of time:
Made for this project.
The research indicates that even if the trend is to always follow a pattern, cases of outliers happen frequently, and with this, we decided to start research regarding the main theme: climate change.
By analyzing various data and articles, we realized that there was a small correlation between the two data, both are in a constant pattern, but have large outliers in a time interval of 5 years.
Made for this project.
This hypothesis was reason enough for us to start developing an idea for prevention of damage caused by high temperatures. With this came the idea of the T.O.F. project. Providing time and information to our users, with the goal of decreasing each year, such rates of deaths from causes related to climate damage.
Detailed Project Description:
Tools / Coding Languages / Software Used:
- Javascript
- Node JS
- Flutter
- Python
- Jupyter
- Visual Code
- Android Studio
- Postman
https://github.com/project-tof
https://youtu.be/FjJ4j4ZTiRI
Space Agency Data
Hackathon Journey
Being the first Hackaton for everyone on the team, we could expect no less.
It was two days of a lot of effort, tiredness and problems to solve. However, at the end of it all, we see how rewarding this experience was, not only for participating, but for learning, for connecting with people, making friends, and all at the same time as you are in a constant personal development.
We, members of the T.O.F. project are happy to say that we have come to the end of this journey that brought us so much learning in just two days.
References
Data & Resources:
- Efeitos das queimadas na saúde humana
- Air Pollution
- Weather.gov
- Temperature Change
- HealthLine
- Monitoramento de focos de incêndios e áreas queimadas com a utilização de imagens de sensoriamento remoto
- Global Review of Forest Fires - Andy Rowell and Dr. Peter F. Moore
- C2ES
- WorldWeatherOnline
- W3schools
- Matplotlib
- Pandas
Tags
#biodiversity, #sustinable_development #mobile_mapping, #damage_detection, #disaster, #recovery #timely_response, #satellite_images, #machine-learning , #TOF, #T.O.F., #Project_T.O.F.
Global Judging
This project has been submitted for consideration during the Judging process.