Canopy

The average highest temperature in Bauchi, Nigeria used to be 37.8C, but now it has inreased to 42C?, at Canopy, we are building a web platform to solve Global Warming through trees monitoring.

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Inspiration

We gained admission to study in Bauchi, a state in North-Eastern Nigeria in 2019, it is a general belief that the state is hot, as at then the highest temperature when the place is scorching is 37.8-degree Celsius, fast forward to 2024, and the temperature has increased by 11.1% to become 42-degree celsius.

After carefully studying the situation, what we observed as a team is that Gas prices increased, Kerosene prices increased, and people and students opted for charcoal, for the supplier to meet the demand, they started cutting more trees, because of fewer trees, the heat increased.

With these, we saw that tress constitute a crucial role in maintaining order in our climate and failure to plant new trees or limit the rate of tree falling, we will be at a greater risk in the nearest future

What it does

Canopy is a platform that aims to address the problem of deforestation caused by lumbering activities. Our solution currently has four major services which are:

  1. Tree Mapping: A web platform where citizens can report fallen trees or areas lacking trees.
  2. Heat Mapping: A web platform for visualizing heat and tree density maps, highlighting vulnerable areas.
  3. Tree Planting Campaign: A platform where students and youth can organize community planting events. Participants can sign up, select locations, and get resources (seedlings, instructions).
  4. Funding: Crowdfunding/donation sections to support reforestation efforts.

Our solution aligns with SDG 13: Climate Action and SDG 15: Life on Land.

How we built it

Our solution is web-based and is currently built using HTML, CSS, and Javascript. The web solution is currently equipped with four functionalities:

  1. Tree Mapping: There is a page where users and citizens can report fallen trees or illegal trees falling, users have the option of adding pictures as a piece of visual evidence and this will be submitted and necessary actions will be taken by the admin as regarding the users request in the form.

  2. We used a map library Leaflet to show heat-affected regions and also an option to allow users to identify and point to heat-affected areas on the map due to the absence of trees.

  3. We used HTML and CSS to create a page where students and citizens can view ongoing or upcoming tree-planting campaigns, and interested individuals can also organize community planting events. Participants can sign up, select locations, and get resources.

  4. Donations: We created a page where individuals like Nursery Farmers and resource persons can donate trees or finance the tree monitoring campaign.

Challenges we ran into

Our team consists of members proficient in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence and little website-building experience, the first challenge we ran into was getting familiar with the syntax of HTML, CSS, and Javascript again.

We ran into the challenge of integrating a backend into our solution, we had to consider various options of using Python Django, or other backend frameworks.

We had issues while integrating the map library into our solution reason being that that will be the first time we are using the library as a different individual in the team.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The team is proud that we are able to work together to come up with an idea that addresses our immediate environment and challenges. We saw that mouth to mouth campaign is not enough to monitor the trees in our environment and we saw a need to have a platform where other individuals can contribute.

What we learned

We learned over this weekend the concepts of HTML, CSS, and Javascript since most of our team members are proficient in Python and AI.

We also learned about the concept of heat maps and how to integrate them into a website.

We learn most importantly how to work as a team. This will be the first hackathon for some of our team members, we learn what it means to work in a team

Time Management

Because we had to work on several projects at once at this weekend's hackathon, we struggled to manage our time. Even though we wasted a lot of hackathon time on team building and brainstorming, we are happy that everything went as planned. Thankfully, we could accomplish this by assigning ourselves tasks and concentrating on multitasking. I'm ecstatic about all the lessons and insights this hack has given us.

What's next for Canopy

The team is planning to make Canopy not only address the issue of tree planting and monitoring but also other factors contributing to climate change like waste management and life on land.

We plan to integrate a backend solution for monitoring and tracking the amounts of money planted and the charities raised toward the tree planting campaign.

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