Space Apps Challenge 2018

Background

We have to pour out the stigma that bees are bad because you can be stung by one. There are a lot of bees that do not sting, they just want to do their job, just want to pollinate.

They are our friends. Bees pollinate 75% of all plants in the world (1), just because of bees that we have cacao, passion fruit, nuts and a lot of other things. Those are really alarming data. In other hand, bees are in the risk of being extinct (2). If they were extinguished from the world, that probably would be prejudicial to our ecosystem that would undergo radical changes and we would lose a big part of our feeding. That's why we have to preserve them, study them more and understand what we can do to stop bees' death.

Today we know that bees die because of different things, as like forest fires, deforestation, the use of pesticides and fungus. The deforestation and forest fires can kill them burned, or they can be killed because of the smoke but if both things do not happen they will die because will have no supply to survive.

Pesticides and fungus are responsible for Colony Collapse Disorder – CCD (3), which is the phenomenon that occurs when the majority of worker bees in a colony disappear and leave behind a queen. Some organizations have been doing some studies to find what they can do to understand it better. The study has 3 main components: data collection to determine the extent of CCD and the current status of honey bee colony production and health; analysis of bee samples to determine the prevalence of various pests and pathogens, bee immunity and stress, and exposure to pesticides; preventive measures to improve bee health and habitat and to counter mortality factors. But this plan is just to understand a very specific thing, the CDD.

Another studies monitor bees but just in controlled situations in apiaries. They have no monitoring about how wild bees live.

Our product

We designed a collaborative solution, an app, where we can map bees and hives with help of biologists, tourists guide or by someone who is passionate by nature. All they have to do if they see a bee is to localize it in the map, and if they know, they tell us what bee is that. If they see a hive, apart from localizing it in the map and tell what kind of bee built that hive, they will tell us how big is it. When we receive the data that someone spotted a bee or a hive we will, using NASA`s satellites, monitor this location to know its temperature, humidity, deforestation and the probability to have a forest fire. On the other hand, the person who localized it will also have access to that data to monitor it with us.

Implementation

Our app was implemented as an open and hybrid application for android and IOS. using React Native language.

To save information on the data base and make than available for users through rest services we use JAVA 8 application.

Principals technologies used on this project are: React-Native, Expo, Redux, Axios, Java 8, Spring, Spring Boot, Spring Data, Apache Maven, Post Gres data base and Lombok.

The code is available at: https://github.com/BenHurMartins/BeeLive

What can we do in the future?

We know that exist more than 2000 bees species in the world. It's a great challenge to catalogue them all. We want to do this by images. When our collaborator sent us the data about bees or hives, together he will send, if he wants, a photo of the bee. Having this image we will consult banks of images that already exist and compare to find the correspondent. The interesting part of this is that our collaborator will instantly receive information about that species when he took the photo.

Another step that is possible is to analyze the data that we collect to predict when a hive is in risk to be destroyed, finding patterns on the data that lead us to the factor that is killing bees. Not just that, but we can predict when the wind is going to be strong, when the air is going to be really dry or too much humidity. Knowing in the map where those hives are we can transfer them to a safe place if there is no other choice.

In the same way that we applied our product to hives and bees, we can do the same to study why a tree is getting extinct, to study what is causing your extinction, or maybe, to study another animal, insects, the possibilities are big.

Marketing strategy

Knowing that our collaborators are biologists, tourist guides and naturalists. We will share our app in pages that is about trekking, camping, also in hostels and hotels to affect tourists guides and naturalists. To affect biologists, we are going to carry our idea to the university and share our it with them. Our product can also be funding from companies that care about nature and animals.

To whom can our data be useful?

Our data can be useful to scientists who want to study more about bees, their local ecosystem. Looking through the perspective of the tourist guide and the naturalist, they want to preserve the beautiful nature of their city. Both can feel like scientists because they are going to be contributing for a study, a research. This can be a motivation for them to participate and give us the data that we need.

Public institutions also can be interested in our product and in our data to control other things beyond bees. As we talked in "What can we do in the future?", if our product is good to be used in bees to monitor them, it can be easily expanded to others studies.

Bibliography

1. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United States. Pollinators vital to our food supply under threat. Available on: . Last access: 10/21/2018

2. GORMAN, Steve. U.S. Lists a Bumble Bee Species as Endangered for First Time. Scientific American, January 11, 2017. Available on: . Last access: 10/21/2018

3. United States Environmental Protection Agency. Colony Collapse Disorder. Available on: . Last access: 10/21/2018