Team Name

The Frog Council

Team Members

Project Description

Our green urban spaces are important - let's make the most of them

Over the COVID-19 situation, and the imminent risk that Climate Change poses to Australia, the impact of public and natural places on the quality life has become evident. Associating benefits such as mental health, temperatures control and activation, green spaces are now highly relevant to urban planning. The appropriate planning and maintenance of those spaces is pivotal to integrate them successfully with the natural environment and the city areas around them.

By using a suite of best-practice and innovative environmental health indicators, including frog sightings, biodiversity metrics, AQI, and water pollution which are obtained from both traditional as well as leading technologies such as microsensors (IoT), automatic frog identification through audio-based machine learning and other technologies; we can significantly improve the quality of urban planning and maintenance - especially for long-term environmental sustainability support and the residents' desire to live in green areas.

Frogly is an interactive map to track the environmental health of areas in the city, and support development of green spaces by providing climate, social and environmental insights over an area of interest. Our project has been supported by frog sightings added by the New South Wales community, along with further integration with other physical and social datasets. This community-driven data initiative minimizes the maintenance of the system, and increases the engagement of the community with the spaces, while still providing good quality data to work from.

Frogly - Informing the public spaces of tomorrow

References

• Commonwealth of Australia, 2012, THE CRITICAL DECADE New South Wales climate impacts and opportunities, ISBN: 978-1-922003-43-0 (pdf)
• Government Architect New South Wales, 2020, GREENER PLACES, An urban green infrastructure design framework for New South Wales, Issue no. 03
• Dr Christopher Ives et all, RMIT, 2014, PLANNING FOR GREEN OPEN SPACE IN URBANISING LANDSCAPE
  
• World Health Organization, 2017, Urban green spaces: a brief for action, www.euro.who.int
• https://www.planning.nsw.gov.au/Policy-and-Legislation/Open-space-and-parklands
• https://www.dpie.nsw.gov.au/premiers-priorities/great-public-spaces/open-space/parks-for-people
• https://www.dpie.nsw.gov.au/premiers-priorities/great-public-spaces
• https://www.greater.sydney/metropolis-of-three-cities/sustainability
• http://www.wupcenter.mtu.edu/education/frogs/frognews.htm

Data Story

We started by importing our frog census and sightings datasets into GIS software. Using the Sydney land zoning data, we looked at the frogs in green urban areas. Finally, we generated a heatmap of frog density in each space to create a contoured "Environmental Health Index" layer.

The front-end is written in React with Leaflet as a map library to display the layer we created.