[Thailand Chapter] Monitoring Change in Urban Green Areas and Tree Cover Using Satellite Imagery in Thailand region

Challenge Started!

This Omdena Local Chapter Challenge runs for 6 weeks and is a unique experience to try and grow your skills in a collaborative and safe environment with a diverse mix of people from all over the world. 

You will work on solving a local problem, initiated by the Omdena Bangkok, Thailand Chapter.

The problem

Prosperous cities seek to increase their green areas for better air quality and improved quality of life for their populations. Green spaces in cities mitigate the effects of pollution and can reduce the urban heat island effect. At the same time, land use change in urban areas leads to a reduction in tree cover, contributing to the loss of biodiversity.

Accordingly, it is important for cities to monitor their progress in maintaining and increasing their tree cover and green areas. The monitoring will enable city authorities to measure the environmental impacts of urban development against their mitigation measures, as well as support city policy actors in decision-making. 

The project goals

The AI solution should involve the extraction of data from satellite imageries hosted on cloud-based platforms (e.g., the Earth Engine’s public data catalog), and within defined city boundaries, generate statistics on two urban indicators related to environmental sustainability. To enable comparison of city statistics, the project will utilize the urban boundaries generated through the harmonized city definition approach (JRC-UrbanCentresDatabase)

These indicators are:

• Change in green Areas per Capita as defined in the Global Urban Monitoring Framework (UMF-47). The methodology involves the estimation of a city area under vegetation cover for several time periods e.g., the years 2000, 2010, and 2020; the indicator has 2 key metrics: change in green areas over time, and change in per capita green areas over time, which factors the changes in city population.
• Change in Tree Cover as defined in the Global Urban Monitoring Framework (UMF-48). The methodology involves estimation of the city area under tree cover for several time periods e.g., the year 2000, 2010, and 2020, and analyzing the change over time.

Why join? The uniqueness of Omdena Local Chapter Challenges

Omdena Local Chapter Challenges are not a competition or hackathon but a real-world project that will grow your experience to a new level.

A unique learning experience with the potential to make an impact through the outcome of the project. You will go through an entire data science project lifecycle. This covers problem scoping, data collection, and preparation, as well as modeling for deployment.

And the best part is that you will join the global and collaborative community of Omdena with tons of benefits to accelerate your career.

Read more on how Omdena´s Local Chapters work