Green Terrace

Inspiration

Green Terrace has been designed to achieve more sustainable and productive outcomes in urban spaces when it comes to terraces. The project addresses challenges related to the rise in food prices, environmental impacts, and community wellbeing by making green hubs out of terraces. Based on data and AI, Green Terrace enables city dwellers to cultivate fresh produce, decrease carbon footprints, and make forgotten places precious eco-friendly assets again.

What it does

Green Terrace is an application designed to assist city residents in converting abandoned roof spaces into active gardens. The app analyzes user inputs, including location, rooftop area, and local climate, and then recommends the best plants to grow for optimal yield. It further computes and tracks the carbon absorption of each plant grown, thereby demonstrating to users their positive contribution toward the environment. It also has a social feature that allows users to share their carbon reduction records; thus, there is community participation in sustainable urban farming.

How we built it

Green Terrace is an outcome of data science, artificial intelligence, and mobile-friendly tools. All these combined created a user-friendly application for urban gardeners. Initially, we gathered information regarding the needs of plants, climate conditions, and market prices. Then, through real-time climatic data using APIs like OpenWeather, we were able to match each user's location and terrace conditions with the ideal plants. We developed machine learning models in the backend, including Logistic Regression and Random Forest, to analyze climate and suggest suitable crops for urban rooftops. We optimized it with TensorFlow Lite for quick and accurate predictions on mobile devices. Finally, we designed an interface that lets users know the estimated savings from homegrown crops and also tracks the carbon absorption of every plant. To make the app informative, empowering, and impactful, we added social features so that users could share their carbon reduction efforts and interact with others concerned about sustainable urban gardening.

Challenges we ran into

One challenge we faced in ensuring the relevance of the recommendations provided to a user was gathering precise, localized climate and vegetation data. The integration of real-time weather data into our models was quite complex, particularly in maintaining mobile efficiency. Additionally, we encountered hurdles in optimizing machine learning models for mobile platforms, which required a fine-tuning process with TensorFlow Lite to achieve speed improvements while keeping accuracy intact.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We take pride in having developed an app that integrates AI with real-time climate information to support growing plants on urban rooftops. We designed a solution that prescribes the optimal plants, quantifies savings, and monitors carbon sequestration. Moreover, the social sharing aspect fosters interaction within the community.

What we learned

We learned the power of combining data science with practical, real-world applications to solve urban sustainability challenges through our experience in the hackathon. Merging real-time weather information with AI models helped us craft recommendations that were more accurate and tailored. The session also imparted essential learning about optimizing machine learning models for mobile devices and the role of user engagement in encouraging sustainable behavior. Finally, the hackathon confirmed that teamwork along with creative problem-solving is what results in innovative solutions being implemented.

What's next for Green Terrace

Next for Green Terrace is expanding its features to include a broader range of plants and integrating more advanced AI capabilities for better yield predictions. We plan to add more sustainability metrics, such as water usage and energy savings, to further empower users. Additionally, we aim to partner with local organizations to offer users access to gardening resources and tools. Our long-term vision is to scale Green Terrace to more cities, making urban farming accessible and impactful on a global level