By informing users on such a significantly urgent global issue, we are able to garner strong support on making impactful changes in Brazilian legislation. Our comparison of data in the State of Amazonas and other regions in Brazil enhances our understanding of the impacts of COVID-19, and more importantly, what we can do as global citizens to tackle the problem. Indigenous groups will decimate if the Brazilian government does not address socioeconomic conditions or alarmingly high deforestation rates. Our website makes a strong and meaningful connection between these factors, and thus, fosters a mindset of change and justice.
While we were researching COVID-19 impacts around the globe, we learned that Brazil is quickly rising to the top and is now second in terms of number of cases. This caught our attention and we decided to zone in on certain regions, consider potential factors, and most importantly, how this is affecting certain groups of people. Brazil is home to thousands of tribes and indigenous people who do not have access to the resources that many of us are fortunate to have, and their death rates are skyrocketing. This spoke to our hearts and we decided to make a platform for users to view different factors that affect the rising cases in Brazil. With resources from NASA and JAXA, we were able to analyze numerous factors, such as quantitative air quality measurements and death rates, that have a correlation with the high infection rates. The NASA and JAXA resources thoroughly helped us gather relevant information on deforestation levels, air quality measurements, population densities, death rates, and total number of cases. This data tied together our whole project and provided us great information to support our cause. We wanted the public to be aware of this and have a platform where they can visualize the nuances of data in an easy to understand manner to spread awareness, and NASA and JAXA’s data sets helped us get there. We used HTML, JavaScript, CSS, Google Maps, Google Drawing, Visual Studio, Github, Bootstrap, Infogram, and Plotply (for live data on COVID-19 cases). We are new to data visualization to exploring the platforms and embedding them in an easy to use interface was our largest goal, and we are happy with how it worked out. User interface is important because our primary solution is bringing awareness so that we can get support to change environmental policies in these regions before it is too late. An issue that we struggled with was importing live data into our interactive maps, and using excel to track live data of COVID-19. This took the most amount of time, but we were able to successfully complete this task and learned a lot about working with live data for the first time. Overall, this project helped us develop our understanding of COVID-19 impacts, computer science skills, and data analytic skills, which collectively has helped us make a larger impact in our world today with our solution.
Our website is www.savetheamazon.us and we have attached our github repository below
NASA Resources:
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/145988/tracking-amazon-deforestation-from-above
https://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/mapping/popest/covid-19/
JAXA Resources:
https://www.eorc.jaxa.jp/jjfast/jj_mapmonitor_phase1.html
Other Resources:
https://news.google.com/covid19/map?hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aen&mid=%2Fm%2F01hdpp
http://www.cedlas.econo.unlp.edu.ar/wp/en/estadisticas/sedlac/estadisticas/#1496166246008-c6d0ae04-10bd
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/may/28/studies-add-to-alarm-over-deforestation-in-brazil-under-bolsonaro-covid-19
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/how-covid-spreads.html
For images: https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/14/americas/coronavirus-amazon-brazil-destruction-intl/index.html <br>
For images: https://www.change.org.html
For images: https://en.mercopress.com/2019/11/19/record-deforestation-in-the-amazon-rainforest-confirms-official-brazilian-data