Group has developed a system based on artificial intelligence to identify oil spills in the oceans. According to one of the creators, the intention is to seek government support to deploy the platform. In Greek mythology, Poseidon is the god who protects the waters. And this was the name chosen by a group of Brazilians for a system that intends to use satellite images, artificial intelligence and algorithms to detect the existence of stains caused by oil spills in the oceans. The idea was one of the winners of the Nasa Space Apps Challenge, an international competition that seeks innovative ideas, based on data produced by the American space agency, to solve both space and terrestrial challenges. The awards took place in mid-March at NASA headquarters in Washington, capital of the United States. The Brazilian group was formed with the aim of participating in the event. Two of them already knew each other from a previous competition held by IBM. The others were recruited for the project. Recent graduates in areas related to technology and information technology, all of them already worked in the private sector. According to NASA’s competition regulations, the entire project was developed in 48 hours, on the date set for the event, in 2019. It worked like this: they found out about the challenge and, from then on, they had the deadline set to present a solution. According to information from the project registered on the NASA website, an API — an acronym in English for application programming interface — could cross information captured by satellites and, with the use of algorithms and artificial intelligence, quickly locate the points with air leaks. offshore oil. According to the project’s description, the API “could be consulted by governments and third parties” and this detection would serve for the competent bodies to be able to “act quickly in response, minimizing the environmental disaster and the socioeconomic impact”. How it works In an interview with DW Brasil, designer, programmer and entrepreneur Felipe Ribeiro Tanso, one of the members of the winning team, explains how the mechanism works. “It has an artificial intelligence that checks images captured via satellite and returns the probability of having oil slicks in a certain region of the ocean, alerting the bodies responsible for monitoring and mitigating these accidents. and environmental issues that such disasters could affect the lives of millions of people”, he explains. As the proposal was implemented in the form of an API, the system can be absorbed by other software or applications, making it easily applicable. “This allows other tools to use our solution as something within their own systems,” explains Tanso. Technologist and data scientist Ricardo Ramos, another member of the team, says that the method they developed is based on so-called “neural networks”. But there was an improvement. “We’ve added shortcuts to skip two or three layers (in progress) to make the process faster,” he says. Of the five involved in the project’s developer group, only three attended the award ceremony. According to Tanso, the agenda included two full days at NASA headquarters, “with recognition and the possibility of having closer contact with brilliant scientists responsible for various missions related to space exploration, such as the Artemis mission, which aims to take the man back to the moon”. “It was amazing,” he adds. “Just being in Washington and being welcomed at NASA headquarters was a huge and exciting achievement. It was like a childhood dream come true. Space issues have always caught my attention and getting there had a very sentimental appeal for me. ” Pandemic and delay The winning team regrets, however, that the system is not yet in use. And, at this point, it is not even possible to attribute the non-adoption of the platform to the novelty of the development. After all, the NASA award is recognizing a 2019 project — originally, Brazilians would be decorated in 2020, but the covid pandemic suspended the schedule at the time. “We haven’t yet been able to implement this technology in any sector to work in a real way”, says Tanso. “Our goal has always been to have government support to implement this as a solution that could in some way help our country, not just serve as a private product.” He points out that “one of the brilliant things” of this initiative by the American space agency is “precisely the social cause of how we can impact and improve human life on Earth or beyond”. “So, from my point of view, empathy is one of the main characteristics to build effective solutions that meet most of the challenges”, he comments. “The biggest difficulty for this at the time was in fact the pandemic, attention and focus ended up being lost, which impacted not only the team’s routine but also the companies and the government”, he lists. “From a technical point of view, there is also the difficulty in dealing with large data provided by space agencies that end up needing more advanced financial and technological resources to handle, process and filter this large amount of data.” “(The Poseidon) is not being used, unfortunately”, says Ramos. “Our initial objective was to be able to work with a government agency”. The award trip revived the group’s expectations. “Our next step now is to make contact with NASA and try an internship program internally”, says Tanso. “Suddenly we can understand more about the data they have, the tools, and expand the solution. Our goal has always been social. It was never to make the project something that was actually profitable or could change our lives, but rather we want to help people. ” Bouboulina oil tanker “At the time we decided to carry out a project aimed at oil spills, we had the intention of remedying a pain that Brazil was feeling in that situation”, emphasizes Ramos. The text of the project mentions that “every year thousands of tons of oil are dumped in the oceans”. “In Brazil, we were recently affected by an immense and mysterious oil slick”, continues the text, saying that “the disaster was affecting the biodiversity of the South Atlantic and socioeconomically harming the affected regions”. The reference was to the oil stains that mysteriously appeared on the Brazilian coast from August 30, 2019, a pollution that spread over more than 3,000 kilometers of the coast, from Maranhão to the north of Rio de Janeiro. Later, investigations concluded that the damage had been caused by the Greek-flagged oil tanker Bouboulina, a vessel loaded in Venezuela and bound for South Africa. “The pandemic ended up making travel plans difficult”, comments Tanso. “At first, our trip was scheduled for 2020 with the aim of accompanying the space launch of the Perseverence rover, at Cape Canaveral, Florida. With the closure of airports and health at risk, the visit was postponed until this year, 2023, with the change of schedule and location to Washington.” He says that, at the time, there was support from some companies that would sponsor the trip, since NASA “is not involved in any financial responsibility”. “That, unfortunately, ended up being damaged too”, he reports. Author: Edison Veiga
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