BioEnterprise| Scanning for Lifeforms
Awards & Nominations
BioEnterprise has received the following awards and nominations. Way to go!
Scanning for Lifeforms
BioEnterprise
Summary
Money makes the world go round, but at what cost? This app informs and educates the effect on biodiversity by business-driven environmental changes. Primarily the app is for anyone interested in starting a new business, but has been designed in such a way as to both educate and encourage action.
How We Addressed This Challenge
What is BIoEnterprise
The app is to be a user-friendly application that analyse NASA Earth data to inform of our global situation and show predictions resulting from business driven environmental changes. I will do this in 3 parts.
This gives real time information using NASA data to show the current state of global Biodiversity. Giving information on why and how we got here i.e., 20 new avocado farms have reduced the available water in the Mexico region. This information can be used by anyone from researches to individuals to gain an understanding of the changing world, and make some better choices
The game concept, is to build a business in a virtual world. However using NASA Earth data, and Machine learning the game actually shows predictions of how your actions would affects the world's current Biodiversity systems. The aim of the game is to build a business with a low biodiversity footprint. Teaching the valuable lesson of how irreversible changes to biodiversity systems are by allowing the gamer to spotting patterns when each year goes by without negatively impacting the earth's further in real terms. The aim is to ensure all future enterprises are more considerate with their choices, by providing them with a broader perspective, to bring about sustainable long-term changes.
Finally to encourage immediate action by the creation of a Business plan: the concept is the creation of business plan that using NASA Earth data, and Machine learning to provide the business idea with a projection of a sustainable biodiversity footprint. This footprint can then be used to change their business model or advertise it and get crowd funding or sponsorship.
Why is it important
BioEnterprises concept design, is to be a starting point to trigger change to combat the growing and complex problem, of living and working in an unsustainable way. As of 2016, 58% of small business already had international customers. Cost is a major factor in driving business out of the local community. This is not only having an impact on our carbon footprint but more importantly our Biodiversity footprint, unfortunately both challenges are viewed by society with less immediacy because of the lack of full comprehension and clarity on the situation. With Extinction being forever: in 9 years (2010-2019) the International Union for conservation of Nature (IUCN) declared the extinction of 160 species. Immediacy is long overdue. This app is to help us as a society to maintain clarity by providing consistent Horizontal communication specifically aimed at business who fundamentally are the decision makers and shapers of our communities
What you hope to achieve
An app that continuously obtains information on land, water, and vegetation resources, at a global scale, enabling all business tothink Globally, but act Locally.
How does it work
During the game you are asked to input information that is then used by machine learning to retrieve relevant NASA Earth data that is applicable only to your circumstances, ie geography of business, where products are made and material come from, and then are show how the manufacturing or making of these items affects the biodiversity of the geographical are concerned. This could be the depletion of resources such as land, water or loss of habitat and eventual extinction of species associated with that area.
The information can also help people gauge the health of their local community and as such enable good choices to promote wellness.
People value and seek validation from other, so the main aim is to increase awareness, understanding and strive for an individual low Bio footprint.
How We Developed This Project
What inspired your team to choose this challenge?
I, Thomas love trees, and nature, so does Primrose, but she is also an avid loves of animals, so the challenge choice was an obvious one for us. We just chatted and threw some ideas about. Our first idea was about tracking specific trees and ensuring that if and when they are replanted, the same species were being replaced, simply because the tree species dictate the animals that in habituated it. So by significantly changing the plant species you would change the biodomes living in the area. I was interested in this because we always hear about how company's are replanting trees they have used. But it does not seem to make a difference. Primrose was more keen on tracking the animals, so we talked about this for a while and then moved onto the reason why animals moved. It became clear that we could not save the animals because people already knew what was going on, but are to complacent because they either forget or don't really understand, or cant see the problem because its too big to see or are too far away, so not affecting them personally. The only way we could see to save the animals and the trees was to make the problem more manageable, closer and smaller to see.
What was your approach to developing this project?
Primrose can code in scratch but only enjoys the arty side and just wanted to do the presentation, I wanted to do the coding and I have experience with Python, so it was agreed, I would build and she would decorate.
We hashed out a plan of our idea, and started looking for team members. The first interested person had experience with Blockchain software and we discussed on Miro the possible applications to this, I liked the idea as it would make the app safe, especially as we had thought it would be a good idea for business to try and get crowd funding or sponsorship, but he was not sure about the AI and the ML part so never joined. With the help of a Mentor we learned about IBM cloud and I like the idea, we will still be using the IBM cloud however because of time we shall only be using it for the jupyter notebooks part, rather than the ML and AI. Time issues made this harder, and thus we had to move on to a different approach please see miro for more details.
What tools, coding languages, hardware, software did you use to develop your project?
We are making the project with python, jupyter notebook in IBM cloud. Then moving onto panopolly free NASA soft ware which can allow you to visualise Data sets quickly. Again see Miro
What problems and achievements did your team have?
The main challenge was finding new team team members who had the experience we needed, however thanks to the friendly Mentors specifically John Bradford, Ade-Staple Hill and Magnus Ross we managed to achieved a great deal. Additionally we found retrieving the NASA data to use challenging because of the various file formats.
How We Used Space Agency Data in This Project
We are using NASA data to find out environmental factors around the world.
it is these factors that effect biodiversity. If the computer knows that an animal needs an environment with no heat and lots of water. It can pinpoint locations where the animal might be found and see how they have changed.