EO Dashboard Hackathon

WQ | Looking at the Big Picture

Looking at the Big Picture

The COVID-19 pandemic offered an unprecedented opportunity to look at changes in the Earth system in response to reduced human activity. Your challenge is to develop tools to better understand changes in the interconnected Earth system as seen through the EO Dashboard.

MDC(Miniature Data Collector) and Data Analysis Website

Summary

This project aims to designing a device for collecting on-site data of chlorophyll-a for monitoring of algal blooms which is mainly induced from the agricultural effluents. Although various industries ceased to operate during the COVID-19 pandemicthe agricultural production didn't stop because of which the agricultural wastes were still prevalent. Our data collector will be used onsite and the data will be obtained on real time basis. The design of the data collector is made mobile and portable and can easily be transported to various locations for collection of data.

How I Addressed This Challenge

Our team has developed a device which can be used in the waterbody for the measurement of the level of nutrient pollutants coming out of effluents into the water body, the impact of such pollutants on the alteration of the water quality and growth of the algal blooms.

This device will be used on-site so that it can move across the water body, get all the necessary information on real time basis and communicate these information so that the condition can be monitored remotely.

The device is made in the shape of a fish so that it can move easily in the water body and also not get much attention from other species in the water body. This device will have sensors for gathering the data of various parameters, GPS for tracking the location, camera for getting photographs aiding for visual representation, power supply, and also communication unit for transferring of the collected information to the user.

We hope that this device will be useful for scientists and other stakeholders for the determining the level of organic pollutants in the water body, its impact on spatial and temporal scale, and also the point or area source of origination of such pollutants.

How I Developed This Project

The coding languages we used are Hypertext Markup Language(HTML), Cascading StyleSheets(CSS) and JavaScript(JS). Regarding the inspiration for our project, it is often said that a closer look helps understand the situation better. Coming from that perspective, our team decided to develop a tool which can provide us data as vivid as "a first hand account". Satellites are versatile but may not be able to give us a complete idea of the picture. Through our MDC, we aim to understand the situation more closely by utilising the device's experience in the situations and analyse the root cause and solution more carefully. Our MDC is designed as a flatfish so as to not harm the aquatic life and create the device as being natural. It is equipped with multiple probes which can record and report data on multiple parameters as and when is required.

How I Used Space Agency Data in This Project

We used space agency data for getting idea regarding the current situation for the development of our tool. NASA's datasets have been our springboard since day 1. They have helped us analyse and comprehend our situation better so that we come up with the best solution. Through satellite images we got a sense of the anomalies and any trends, which helped us structure our course of action and tool better so that it not only serves it's purpose, but also utilises resources and aids NASA in it's endeavour to delve deep and explore the relationship between environment and indicators. Though it was slightly fazing at first, however, it gave us an insight into how NASA employees work each day and helped us move forward with our challenge in order to develop a tool to conquer it.