The alarming rate of illegal wildlife transactions which in turn lead to their rampant killing, made us try to understand why the market exists in the first place. The demand exists due to infinite number of reasons, which often leads from superstitiousness (something not in our control). So, we went after the supply and to control that, we'll have to start from understanding how, where and for how much are they sold.
Our software, in it's current state, scraps data from the forums available in the surface web to do just that. Using the data, we've built a barebone GUI to facilitate the ease with which the animal conservationists access the price of a certain species(and its parts).
How we built it
We scraped the description, price and time stamps of each adverts available on the forums. After cleaning the data-set, we used it to build a simple GUI (using Tkinter on Python) to make the process of getting the prices (and their changes with time) easier for the animal conservationists.
Challenges we ran into
We researched during the first half of 9th Nov on the ways to automate the process of live data scrapping on the Deep Web. However, we had to scrap the idea due to time constraints and went with data available on the surface web. (We're confident with enough time to learn more about it, we can make it possible).
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Translated the common names of local languages to the scientific names. Simplified GUI to access the prices and their changes in time.
What we learned
We learned the massive scale of the illegal trade that's happening in our world and have certainly more awareness to easily upgrade our program with enough time.
What's next for Zooskersky (-team Pineapples)
We're planning on finding ways to scrap data from the reliable forums which facilitate the buying and selling on the deep web, with a better and more simplified UI.
Built With
- python
- tkinter
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