Humedales

https://github.com/orgs/HumedalesTeam/repositories

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1oTSqCuGZHNwGade3pvxsioM0hOlJ1F8n

Ignis is a bot programmed to take real-time data from datasets of the Earth (mostly datasets that NASA provides), analyzes them and communicates them in simple ways and useful call-to-action steps, in order to help citizens around the world be informed of possible dangerous climatic situations.

One user has to simply talk to the bot through their most convenient messaging app (Whatsapp, Telegram, Messenger, etc) and ignis will display a friendly message of a list of alerts in which the user can subscribe. For hackathon purposes and constraints of time, we only focused ignis on the current local issues of the fires of the wetlands in our city, Rosario, Argentina. However, it would be amazing to be able to have an app that allows you to choose what types of alerts you wish to get, and also choose the regions of the world. This can help families and communities overseas stay tuned to each other’s alerts on faraway regions and we can help the world be more interconnected, not just with entertainment and social media, but take advantage of crowded apps (such as messaging apps) in collectively useful manners! We hope this tool can be of help to communities, local authorities, human, and environmental rights, and grassroots movements. 

This is a great tool to generate awareness: it allows users to have the historical data of the health of their ecosystems and communities in a chat.

It can help in the betterment of communities in many ways.

First, people that do not know how to use NASA’s data sets, or have access to basic or no technology (like elders or people from marginalized areas) can be granted access to NASA’s datasets in a friendly format.

Second, it can create awareness and help people watch local environmental trends, understand patterns, learn to prevent, and adapt collectively to the environmental changes that are yet to happen more and more.

Third, human and animal rights movements, environmental movements, lawyers and protectors of our Earth as well as good politicians can benefit from the bot because it can serve as a service that not only notifies people about risks and preventions but allows them to connect by the creation of databases made so people can notify symptoms, make testimonies and take a proper record of environmental disasters in the area. This can serve to watch trends, to make legal statements, to keep enhancing and protecting our rights on this Earth.

We hope to achieve a bot that can serve people from all around the world. We first started local, but we aim to go global with more than just fire trends. We hope to connect databases of air quality, winds, tornadoes, droughts, floods of all around the world with their correct risk prevention and local shelters, contacts, governments, hubs, and solutions.

We used clustering of fires: thesatellite-measureddata on wetland fires was pulled from a publicly accessible FIRMS API with the help of Python. It was then processed to cluster the fires within a radius of 1 km, using hierarchical clustering (scipy.cluster.hierarchy package). A new table was generated with fire clusters, and a latitude and longitude central points for each cluster’s circle. WhatsApp API to create the chatbot 

For this project, we used NodeJS and Python, Visual Studio Code as the text editor, Git as VCS, Insomnia as a REST API client, MySQL as the main database (hosted on a linux vm running ubuntu).

We used NASA's FIRMS dataset and AMBEE for now. The project was initially inspired by the FIRMS data, since the national government, and local environmental groups use this platform to guard and make inferences on the local fires in the Wetlands. 

We got this inspiration from real-life issues: we use FIRMS dataset for environmental activism all the time, however, if one is not already open or familiarized with it, it becomes challenging to understand its tools. One has to sit for a few hours or watch some videos to understand it fully. 

The truth is that the common population will only need to learn to use these types of tools such as FIRMS only when there's a local emergency or for educational purposes. However, on the former, it is really understandable that during a crisis one does not simply have the time or ability to learn to use a virtual platform, without it becoming extra stress in emergency cases. 

We wanted to create a way to simplify this information and make it accessible for all people across our territory and the world!

Today, thanks to Space Technology, Humanity has numerous APIS, which provide real-time -almost instantly- Observation Data of the Earth, Our Pachamama. These allow us, as our ancestors did at the beginning of the History of humankind in the Universe, to know, admire and ask questions about the phenomena that humans were experiencing, and that generated mixed feelings of "admiration and fear"; that made humans feel so small and helpless in front of that Outer Space that covered humans.

This experience was the motivation, the IGNIS, the initial fire of awakening towards the search for answers and development of knowledge which in the present are based on the scientific and technological achievements of which we are part; and that we have the enormous possibility of being able to intervene in them, to improve and expand them, in order to be "sustainable support" to the new challenges.

Challenges that, in many cases, Nature herself puts before us, to test us, "on alert" in the face of problems that man himself has generated as a consequence of his self-sufficiency posture, for having forgotten that his subsistence depends on Her, Mother Nature. And that She expects us to return to Her House with respect, with a committed "Make Space", that delivers new opportunities of Space to the Others that are yet to come. 

 -- written by Ana, our wisest team member

Our Space Apps experience has many incredible layers to it. First of all, and most importantly, we learned to work in a group of recently-met people through our common grounds. All of us belong to so many different paths, contexts, ages (15, 18, 21, 22, 25, 59), and stories. We were three local Argentines that met in the hackathon in Rosario, with vastly different ages and abilities, working virtually, alongside two friends that are living in Buenos Aires that are both from Ukraine and Vietnam. What united us all was the common goal of protecting our common home, our Earth.  

Both members from Vietnam and Ukraine come from also critical contexts but we have all a deep understanding of the seriousness and importance of the health of our planet and ecosystems. We cannot be more thankful to them and their predisposition. I believe in this team we all know that it is our duty as humans to help preserve the matrix, the source that gives us life, and that is our Earth.

The project started as a dream, in the minds of local activists of Rosario, we needed a way to alert people in real-time about the environmental issues that go on in the Rosario wetlands, and not just wait for news or biased information to reach and divide us. The truth is that in our region, there are political/economical reasons why the wetlands are unprotected. We need to transcend these issues with collective local unity. However, the current information that exists out there about the environment and Earth monitoring systems seem difficult for the general public. The FIRMS platform is heavy, has many variables, it’s in English, and only works well on good computers, so making it user-friendly and suitable for everyone, sooner or later, was a must.

We wanted to do a useful project, we wanted something that can serve communities for real. We are not focused on winning, at all. We are just moved by the imperatives of doing what is right and standing firm to our duty as informed and creative citizens (of the world!)

We all know deep in our minds and hearts how necessary it is that populations become educated and aware of the climate crisis in real-time. The SpaceApp Hackathon only became an excuse for the group journey, we wouldn’t have been able to meet if it wasn’t because of this! This bot is only getting started. It is a powerful tool to add to any messaging app out there. We wish to keep on working with local communities, and besides alerting, we can also collaborate with grassroots groups to also send alerts of positive changes happening in the region. We also wish to connect and work with any other that can help us make ignis a tool for environmental alerts. 

Our challenges were solved with harmony. Stress was inevitable but we all know that our “winning stage” is not on the results of this competition. We also knew we were doing the best we could in this 48-hr prototyping stage. The competition was a great addition and a good excuse to finally make this activism-dream come true. The competition in itself is just small for our goals. We want to push for cooperative systemic changes, we want to help our populations prepare and adapt for climate disasters, and work hand in hand with local governments and authorities. This is a great tool for education, awareness, information, and collective ecosystem surveillance. The survival of our specie and our communities depends on how adaptable we become to the future of climate collapse transition ahead of us, ignis is just the beginning of this paradigm shift

FIRMS dataset https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/

AMBEE's free tier API https://www.getambee.com/api/air-quality (AMBEE was used for prototype only)

information about the local wetlands used in the powerpoint: https://www.clarin.com/sociedad/sequia-incendios-ley-paralizada-amenazados-humedales-argentina-_0_68L5xu205.html

#climatecrisis #fires #FIRMS #messaging #bot #wetlands #air #water #droughts #floods