Is about Francisco Furey and Malena García Vildozateam members Live Aqua, one of the five winning groups, which focused their work on the crisis of access to drinking water in the world; and María Azul Schvartzman, Iván Barbero and Alfonso Aguilerawho achieved an Honorable Mention by highlighting their project on climate risk mitigation among the 33 selected.
The objective of this contest is to create visualizations, through the use of Earth observation (EO) datawhich provide accurate information on the atmosphere, oceans, ecosystems, land cover and the built environment, essential points to promote the Sustainable Development Goals of: zero hunger, clean water and sanitation, and climate action.
The importance of using these data is that they provide accurate information about the planet’s atmosphere, oceans, ecosystems, and built environments. In total, there were five international teams that won: EE Frogs, H2plastic, Hunatek-Kalman, Spatial Clan and Long live Aqua.
Drinking water: could the solution be underground?
The team of AquaViva focused on developing an innovative solution aimed at addressing the crisis of access to drinking water in the world, through the use of machine learning technology. The objective: generate High resolution groundwater level maps.
This work addresses one of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 6) and uses advanced machine learning models trained with diverse data sets, including satellite images, climate variables and geological features. This tool has the potential to help communities address water scarcity, monitor groundwater, and efficiently locate suitable sources of clean water.
The project, which is open source and free, invites collaborators to improve and expand the work done; For its training data set, the team conducted an exhaustive review of the literature on previous studies and key concepts, in addition to collecting and processing information from multiple sources, such as the Global Groundwater Information System (GGIS/IGRAC)he British Geological Survey (BGS)and tools like AρρEEARS and ClimateSERV.
Their work has allowed the Viva Aqua team to obtain piezometric data from 36 wells in Gambia from 2015 to 2022, in addition to information on climatic and geological variables that facilitate the prediction of groundwater level. According to them, the idea for the project was born after a volunteer trip to Honduras, in which contaminated manual wells were identified and in an effort to reduce the costs associated with hydrogeological studies, the team decided to use technology that could map key information, such as groundwater levels.
The team, which has a multidisciplinary approach, is made up of Argentinians Francisco Furey, a programming enthusiast Pythonnature, satellite images and the piloting of drones that work as data scientist for an American startup related to NFL; and Malena Vildoza, a student of Social and Cultural Anthropology in the National University of San Martín (EIDAES), interested in interdisciplinary research that promotes social and environmental justice.
