The Tech Footprint team, made up of five students from Unicamp and one student from the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), is one of the 40 finalists in the NASA Space Apps Challenge, a North American Space Agency competition focused on innovation and technology. The students developed an application aimed at monitoring, analyzing and making recommendations regarding carbon footprints, a measure that relates to the amount of greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere and global warming. Targeting governments, the work aims to assist them in actions to reduce the consequences linked to carbon emissions.
The team's project is called Where's Carbon and is one of three Brazilian representatives in the final. The group is part of: André Sebastiani Mafei (Mechanical Engineering/Unicamp); André Paiva Carrara (Mechanical Engineering/Unicamp); Rafaela Teixeira Salgado (Food Engineering/Unicamp); Nalim Ângelo de Souza (Food Engineering/Unicamp); Ramonita Aparecida de Oliveira Dias (Food Engineering/Unicamp) and João Vicente Meyer (Computer Science/UFSC).
Where is the carbon?
The team's application, developed in less than 48 hours as required by the challenge, is low-cost and uses data provided by NASA to identify a region's carbon footprint, make predictions about future situations and recommend actions and targets for governments reverse a worsening of the situation. “We take various data, from satellites and terrestrial data, and make a reading that is much easier for those who read it. From this, predictions and recommendations are made so that these numbers do not continue to increase, as we understand that there are serious problems with high carbon footprint numbers”, explains Nalim Angelo de Souza.
All of this, as João Meyer explains, was possible with the creation of a program that uses data provided by NASA to identify situations linked to carbon emissions. “We made a server that receives coordinates and dates and returns data from that moment and place. For example, the level of vegetation, water in the area, CO2 level, among other data.”
André Mafei, a student who is also part of the group, indicates that the team was concerned with presenting the data in an intelligent way. “We thought of a low-cost, high-impact program reading this data, showing it in an intelligent way, trying to make some kind of prediction and helping governments take some kind of action. First we monitor, then we carry out an analysis looking at the future and then we seek to guide our user, which is the government, to take action to avoid a negative future”, he explains.
Predictions and possible actions
The team did some simulations for the competition and gives the example of the city of San Diego, in the United States, to show how the application works. With image processing, areas of ocean (33%), vegetation (20%) and emission (8%) are identified. “This way we can understand what is absorbing and what is emitting carbon and move on to the forecasting stage. The thermal amplitude will increase by an average of 2 degrees compared to 2020, the emission, in parts per million [ppm] will increase by 9% and the green area will reduce by 8%”, points out André.
Based on the predictions, possible actions are listed, classified into five axes: agriculture; solid waste; energy; water and transport. Among the actions recommended for governments, Rafaela Teixeira Salgado points out that they are divided into segments and personalized according to the situation in each region. “We divided the actions by sectors: increasing sources of carbon absorption; actions to mitigate the industrial impact, several actions divided by segments, tangible and targeted for each location analyzed,” she says.
NASA Space App Challenge
The NASA Space Apps Challenge has existed since 2012 and involves creating impactful applications for society in less than 48 hours. NASA points out 22 challenges and teams must choose one to base their projects on. To do this, it provides a large amount of data, from satellites and missions, which is available to teams for use in developing the app. In the first phase of the challenge, around 2.300 projects were selected. Now, there are 40 competing in the final.
In addition to Tech Footprint, two other teams with Unicamp students received global nominations: One Choice One Future e EcoKnowlegde. In each city where there are registrants, volunteers and organizers help run the challenge. Former Unicamp student and CEO of startup Voix, Marco Linhares, participated in the organization in the city of Limeira. “We created a community called Space Apps Brasil and several cities came together to help organize together. That made it a lot easier. As the organizer of Limeira, I created ways to help the teams so that they reached the final stronger,” he says. The selection of mentors to help the teams, for example, was a step that he considers important for this.
Marco, who had the experience of spending a period at NASA through a Singularity program, believes that these challenges are important for students' additional training. “Since graduating I started participating in many events, such as hackathon, lectures and seminars and this helps a lot. I was one of the founders of the Entrepreneurial League and was also a finalist in the Unicamp Challenge and that helps a lot.” Helping other students to have this experience, for him, is motivation to get involved in events like the Space Apps Challenge. “Unicamp welcomed me and I feel a sense of gratitude. What I can return in shares, I return”, he says.
