by Darren Shih
Role: Project Leader
Duration: September 2020 - May 2021
Github: https://github.com/shihd1/iPescadores
iPescadores is a mobile app that utilizes crowdsourcing to produce an updating map of the varying degrees of pollution in Penghu. The core idea is to encourage users to take pictures of trashed areas by rewarding them with advancements in-game.
I come from Penghu, one of the islands off the eastern shore of Taiwan.
Penghu is located in the convergence of two ocean currents, the Kuroshio Current and the China Coastal Current, which makes it the ideal location for plastics to accumulate.
Garbage found on the beaches of Penghu tell of a journey from nearby countries, including China, Japan, and Korea.
The Taiwanese government has made a great effort to block transmission of COVID-19 in its earliest stages, resulting in cases in the tens. With the government encouraging tourism within the country, many citizens have set their sites on Penghu for vacation, resulting in an almost two-fold increase of tourism.
With the COVID-19 pandemic subsiding (edit: in the hopeful 2020), there is an even greater predicted rise of tourism, which would bring even more trash to Penghu, around 90 metric tons per day.
To combat pollution, I drew inspiration from the projects I worked on with students at local Taiwanese universities.
<aside> 🛠National Chiao Tung University: Crowdsourcing platform: I worked on a smart-campus project which utilized reports from students to fulfill campus information needs. I saw the potential of combining the community’s efforts.
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<aside> 🛠Chung Shan Medical University: Deep Learning Research: I studied in the Medical Informatics Healthcare Lab under Assistant Professor Chiun Li Chin, who introduced me to the field of computer vision. I learned about the state-of-art methods of using convolution neural networks to classify images.
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A potential way of combatting pollution could be to use the influx of tourists to my advantage. If each person were to send one image, it would be incredibly useful in keeping track of marine litter on the beaches. This constantly updating map would be useful to non-profit organizations or citizens who would want to know where to go and would provide accurate estimates of the number of volunteers and supplies needed, thereby maximizing the efficiency of cleanup efforts.
The design structure we settled on is depicted below:
To encourage users to help gather pictures, we decided to build a simple game where users get to advance their island from the ground up. As users send in more images, they advance levels and receive in-game currency which they can use to buy formosa animals and plants, as well as houses.