Smoking Snakes - Space Apps Challenge

Smoking Snakes| Automated Detection of Hazards

Automated Detection of Hazards

Countless phenomena such as floods, fires, and algae blooms routinely impact ecosystems, economies, and human safety. Your challenge is to use satellite data to create a machine learning model that detects a specific phenomenon and build an interface that not only displays the detected phenomenon, but also layers it alongside ancillary data to help researchers and decision-makers better understand its impacts and scope.

BAQA

Summary

The BAQA, by indicating and sharing information about the air quality and pollution, besides demographic stats, has the purpose of optimizing the public spendings e indicate where health resources should be directed to combat air problems and improve brazilians breathing.

How We Addressed This Challenge

BAQA is participating on the “Take Action” Challenge, in the “Inform” category. The project addresses the thematic 6: Automated Detection of Hazards.

The air quality in Brazil has been declining every year, because of all the pollution and deforestation. This drop results in an astonishing increase in the number of brazilians that suffer from/acquire breathing problems. In 2018, 139.000 people died victimized by breathing diseases and many others had to be hospitalized because of complications (in 2017, the number of hospitalizations only because of complications with asthma was 92.000).

The most worrisome problem is that this number won´t stop growing. In 2019, breathing problems were the principal cause of hospitalization in the country, reaching 506.900 patients. And in 2020, with the Coronavirus pandemic, the number of victims by complications was never so large.

With the purpose of optimizing the response and application of public funds, the BAQA project analyzes satellite’s data through an A.I., automatically indicating areas that are suffering with bad air quality and informing demographics stats about that zone. The project also can be used to inform individuals with breathing issues about regions that they should avoid during that period.

As a result, it is expected a greater effectiveness from the government on the combat against problems in the air quality and on the health service, and that the population, when alerted about delicate situations, take action in advance to so they won’t suffer complications or acquire diseases.