Forest Guardians - Space Apps Challenge

Forest Guardians| Spot That Fire V3.0

Team Updates

Summary

In this paper, we present a project that consists of an app to prevent, combat and predict fire spots. For this work we will use data collected by many satellites of NASA, ESA and partners, related to climate, vegetation, weather and human activities. Complementing the satellites data of environment variables, specific notes will be uploaded by citizen scientists that indicate location, flame intensity, burned area, wind direction and intensity, rain, soil moisture and local characteristics like natural formation, human activities (agriculture, cattle, forestry, farm and urban areas).

How We Addressed This Challenge

The Problem

The planet's average surface temperature has risen about 2.05 degrees Fahrenheit (1.14 degrees Celsius) since the late 19th century, a change driven largely by increased carbon dioxide and other human-made emissions into the atmosphere (NOAA, 2020). Most of the warming occurred in the past 40 years, with the six warmest years on record taking place since 2014. Not only was 2016 the warmest year on record, but eight of the 12 months that make up the year — from January through September, with the exception of June — were the warmest on record for those respective months. (NASA, NOAA, 2017).

A “wildfire” can be defined as any type of uncontrolled fire that is spreading across wildland, including pastureland, forests, grasslands and peatlands. (Sometimes, fires are started intentionally and in a controlled manner, including during “prescribed burning”).

Globally, wildfires have many impacts on humans, wildlife and the economy. Wildfires are a major driver of greenhouse gas emissions and are also responsible for 5-8% of the 3.3 million annual premature deaths from poor air quality, research suggests (Carbon Brief, 2020).

Humans are responsible for an estimated 75% of all wildfires in recent years. In the tropics, fires are often set intentionally to clear land for agriculture. This method, sometimes referred to as slash-and-burn agriculture, is part of a cycle in which forests are felled in the wet season and, as the dry season progresses, are set ablaze to enrich the soil and prepare for planting or for cattle grazing (Mongabay, 2020)

Considering the evidence indicated previously, the team chose the Spot That Fire V3.0 challenge, thinking that the crescent events of fires are a big challenge to humanity, due to many problems over environment and human activities and, to the last, considering our future challenges to control the greenhouse gases related to climatic changes. On the other hand, we are facing a big event of mass extinction caused by human actions, and wildfires are intimately related to the threat of species. In this way, to appoint, control and extinguish spots of fires can be an efficient approach to preserve the species of the planet.

Our Solution

To resolve the problem associated with wildfires, we will take two specific approaches: first, the app will present a way of easy understanding to the users, leaving them updated on the environment situation by using the maps indicating natural and urban areas, fires, wind direction, rain and soil moisture. Next, through the specific tools, volunteers will be able to contribute, by informing possible spots. After that, the Forest Guardian app will use the data of satellites and the information of the volunteers to communicate with firefighters, civil defense, ONGs and government agencies nearest to the danger.

In conclusion, all of the information collected, created and developed by the use of the Forest Guardian app will feed a database, to produce future research and actions about fires.

How We Developed This Project

Selection of the Challenge and Brainstorm

The team analyzed all of the proposed challenges and we chose three final themes. Everyone discussed possible executions for each topic and we did some voting. In the end, we came to the conclusion that we would like to develop something to impact people directly and we wanted to address a relevant topic.

So, we chose “Spot That Fire V3.0”,

Thus, for the development of the project, we divided the group into tasks: development of the scope of the project, analyze the data provided by NASA, NOAA, ESA and JAXA and the informations by INPE, IBGE, IPCC, mock-up of the application to directing the use of the application to volunteers, brigade members and people who want to contribute to environmental causes.

Application Mock-up

The interactive prototype was developed using the Figma tool, through this activity the group can validate the User Experience before the code development stage, which streamlines the process, allowing us to ask for mentors' opinions and considering that it is a collaborative tool.

List of screens developed for the Volunteer Brigade's software:

· App notification;

· Opening, Login, Account Creation and Password Recovery;

· Home page, Menu;

· Popup permission to access the user's location;

· Latest Occurences: the public brigades feed by the fire department;

· Details of the occurrence: hazard scale, photos of complaints;

· Report fire outbreak, with location (can be selected on the map or not),

image upload, and filling in details sheet;

Environmental impact page: availability of links for raising awareness according to data published by recognized bodies, below we also provide access buttons to the websites: Nasa Climate Change and IPCC.

For the mobile part of the application the developers had use React Native, for its ease of assembling screens and conversation with the backend which was created using Node.js for its ease to develop as well as being a very performance tool and for the database we used MySQL for being easy to deploy.

Future Work and Improvements

We researched on how to produce a more elaborated app that could be applied for all the cities in South America at the beginning. This would be an improvement for the project, but will need more studies to get better communication and action with the brigadiers. After expanding our project to all continents, we will seek partnerships with counties and states so that we can empower a large number of volunteers that in the near future they will assist in fighting fire with us.

Reference

GISS: Surface Temperature Analysis (GISTEMP v4)

https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/

Global Forest Watch

https://www.globalforestwatch.org/

Governo do Estado de Goiás – Secretaria de Segurança Pública e Administração Penitenciária – Corpo de Bombeiros Militar: Prevenção e Combate a Incêndio Florestal. Norma Operacional n. 03

http://www.bombeiros.go.gov.br/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/NO-03-Preven%C3%A7%C3%A3o-e-Combate-a-Inc%C3%AAndio-Florestal.pdf

GOVERNO DO ESTADO DE SÃO PAULO – SECRETARIA DE INFRAESTRUTURA E MEIO AMBIENTE. Operação Corta Fogo: Dinâmica e funcionamento da Operação Corta-Fogo (Sistema Estadual de Prevenção e Combate a Incêndios Florestais)

https://www.infraestruturameioambiente.sp.gov.br/cortafogo/operacao-corta-fogo/como-funciona/

IBGE: Banco de dados de informações ambientais

https://bdiaweb.ibge.gov.br/#/home

INPE - Programa Queimadas: sistemas de monitoramento

http://queimadas.dgi.inpe.br/queimadas/portal

INPE-CPTEC: Mapsat

http://satelite.cptec.inpe.br/mapsat/#download

IPCC: Climate Change 2014 Synthesis Report Summary for Policymakers

https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/AR5_SYR_FINAL_SPM.pdf

JAXA for Earth: Earth Data Collection by JAXA Satellite. http://earth.jaxa.jp/en.html

Mongabay: Around the world, a fire crisis flares up, fueled by human actions

https://news.mongabay.com/2020/09/around-the-world-a-fire-crisis-flares-up-fueled-by-human-actions/