High-Level Project Summary
Terra O is a gateway that provides capacity building resources to Earth Observations. Intended and specifically built to help policymakers all around the world use Earth data to base decisions in order to address natural disasters, land management issues, the impacts of climate change, and other environmental issues.
Link to Final Project
Link to Project "Demo"
Detailed Project Description
Being a platform with the intention of facilitating access to general knowledge about the Earth, providing scientific and accurate data, Terra O, with a direct and intuitive interface, makes anyone have access to the most diverse knowledge in a single platform, while knowing which articles, entries, courses and trainings make more sense for their area of interest or activity.
Importance
The human impacts on the environment have contributed to many issues we witness today: global warming, climate changes, deforestation, among others; since the iron age, the ancient homes would start to develop an extractivism mentality that would last until its pinnacle: the industrial revolution. And only in the end of the 20th century the idea of sustainable development would be first introduced. Therefore we need to hurry over new methods to the protection and management of the environment.
Earth observation has tons of different applications, from monitoring the environment to avoid natural disasters to solving public health problems. Some of these applications are: tracking biodiversity, controlling deforestation and managing natural resources such as energy and agriculture which directly impact our daily lives. Also it is important to emphasize the significant link between the environment and health, upcoming researches show how EO can benefit the public health in matters such as air quality and disease control minimizing the health risks, which is very well exemplified in Lyn D Wigbels work called “Using Earth observation Data to Improve Health in the United States”.
General problem
The potential that comes with studying the Earth’s physical, biological and chemical systems are endless. “First know thyself”, knowing our own planet is essential so we can solve the problems that our modern civilization causes to the world and learn how to minimize its damage. So why don't policymakers use EO? Their proposals and projects for our future could be much more efficient and accurate to the root of the problem if they invested some time on the subject. EO can be quite hard to get into since it's such a specific matter which we are not familiar with, our goal is to teach people to make the best use of this knowledge we have been gathering with the so much sophisticated technologies we have now-a-days for this purpose.
Local problem
Earth observations have already proven effective throughout history, as we see in the reference article "[...] Since 1973, the Brazilian Institute for Space Research (INPE) has been monitoring deforestation in the Amazon rainforest using Landsat EO data [...]". However, according to research, these resources are still not well implemented, either due to lack of financial resources or knowledge. In "[...] Our results suggest that, despite the potential of EO data for informing environmental management in Brazil, its use remains constrained by its lack of suitably trained personnel and financial resources, as well as the poor communication between institutions." we notice that the lack of trained personnel has shown to be a problem in the development of this whole area, making it impossible to make good use of available resources and to make decisions without as much certainty as possible.
Solution
Policymakers need to acknowledge our past mistakes and find more efficient ways to solve problems by learning from the new resources that technology can provide us. Their better understanding over the issues we deal with could result in better solutions and better decision making. And that's where Earth Observations and the Terra O project comes into play.
Terra O is divided into two major navigation modes:
The first is characterized as a guide for individuals new to this field, which provides a detailed description of the different types of Earth surface readings, as well as examples of how one can use this data to solve real-world problems, with a "getting started" guide with excellent content, provided by institutions such as ESA, NASA, UN and CSCRS.
The second section of the site is a search engine where the user can find the fitting resource according to their needs. From a form containing filters ranging from EO topics to the type of training (online or in person), content regarding these data is returned, making the platform not only share knowledge about how to implement Earth Observations, but also provide a tool to leverage the application of this knowledge in the areas of its users.
Collecting data distributed by sources provided by NASA and ESA, we unify the most knowledge in a single platform, grouping by topic, source and difficulty level, thus enabling greater ease when searching for the desired content. Using data from the project's own usage, we were able to display useful resources about the areas of greatest interest, classified by date, region and language, for example.
As such, by having access to the knowledge necessary to understand more of the happenings of a particular region, policemakers can have more mastery over an area to be talked about, thus having more notoriety on the subject. With a powerful search and several types of filters, Terra O can provide precise content for every interest presented by the user, and adjust the courses to the user's level and language.
In an age of information, filtering what is trully critical has become increasingly important, and knowing this, Terra O is has designed itstelf for all kinds of users, whether they have technical knowledge or not.
As a consequence, the visual elements have great importance in any online application, as they provide a more immersive and pleasurable navigation for the user. The color palette was carefully chosen to match the theme and objective of this project.
The O in the project name signifies a unified knowledge, a distributed but connected way of knowing, meeting the project's proposal.
The use of well-accentuated typography like Inter, and elements with a certain brutalist aesthetic - black on white - bring modern characteristics to the design and transform the platform into something lighter and more understandable to the user.
Space Agency Data
Our cores resources getters are consuming the data made available by the following institutions:
NASA:
Applied Remote Sensing Training Program
UN:
ESA:
Therefore, our algorithms are able to put together a large amount of corresponding information on resources specifically requested by the user and display it on the website in a user-friendly interface.
Hackathon Journey
It was two days of a lot of effort, tiredness and problems to solve. However, at the end of it all, we see how rewarding this experience was, not only for participating, but for learning, for connecting with people, making friends, and all at the same time as we were in a constant personal development. Not being able to sleep is really well rewarded after we look back and contemplate what we've done in the past 40 hours.
References
Programming languages, tools and softwares:
Bibliography:
[1] Mercio Cerbaro, Stephen Morse , Richard Murphy , Jim Lynch and Geoffrey Griffiths (2020) Challenges in Using Earth Observation (EO) Data to Support Environmental Management in Brazil. Acessed 2022-10-02 from MDPI.
Using Earth Observation Data to Improve Health in the United States from CSIS.
Tags
#EarthData, #EarthObservation, #TerraO, #Knowledge