MonkeyHead| What Is Our Carbon Footprint?
What Is Our Carbon Footprint?
Versus
Summary
The MonkeyHead team - Developed a solution concept called Versus, an intuitive platform that compares satellite data from NASA or other space agencies and alternative data sources, such as fire rate, in order to facilitate understanding of human activities on the high rates of carbon emission, generating reports that go in the interpretation and decision-making process, understanding what are the main parameters that affects the emission and / or absorption of carbon.
How We Addressed This Challenge
The concept of comparing data from NASA satellites, agencies, space and alternative data sources, such as burning rates, in order to facilitate the understanding of human activities on the carbon footprint. The VERSUS platform helps in the process of interpreting data from the generation of reports that, in turn, will evaluate the decision-making process by understanding what are the main parameters related to carbon emissions.
CO2 is present in the atmosphere of planet Earth, but over the years, as NASA's own data states, after 1950 the concentration of carbon dioxide on Earth has increased considerably and in 2013, CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere went from 400ppm for the first time in history.
The importance of this project is due to the need to inform CO2 emission data in an objective and consolidated manner with other sources, so that the consequences of decision making can be simulated, thus assisting formulations of policies and future containment plans.
The VERSUS proposal will use data by NASA and other space agencies, from the overlapping of images with alternative data sources, to measure how the impact of human activities contribute to the carbon emission on planet Earth.
The concept will use the Python programming language and the Django framework for the treatment of satellite images, converting them into a matrix that, later, are compared with data from external sources (such as government sources on population density, quantities of cars by municipalities. , type of industrial activity, burning rate among others) that can be analyzed together, identifying the sources of carbon emissions with greater accuracy.
VERSUS seeks to assist in the process of interpreting carbon footprint data by generating intuitive reports that, in turn, will assist the decision-making process by understanding what are the main parameters related to carbon emissions, so that consequences of decision-making can be simulated, contributing to new policies and future plans to combat global warming.
How We Developed This Project
At first, we analyzed the themes of the challenges and the group discussed and agreed that the challenge “What’s Our Carbon Footprint?” would be explored. From the challenge identified and reading its briefing, the group met through virtual platforms, Discord and Whatsapp, to communicate and to manage the project we used Trello. For the brainstorm we used the Miro platform in conjunction with Discord, where all participants could interact and apply their ideas.
In the brainstorm, there were several surveys on space agency platforms, projects applied at SpaceApps 2019, projects already developed for NASA's own carbon footprint, suggestions for solutions, understanding of existing solutions and chat with mentors.
Finally, after aligning and understanding the path to be followed, we divide tasks according to specialties, but always with the members of the group, always interacting and helping each other.
How We Used Space Agency Data in This Project
The data used by the Space Agency are from NASA's OCO-2 satellite and were used in a timely manner, where we chose a specific day from a data set for analysis.