Greenizing
Greenizing started from our hope to save polar bears and stop global warming which have been the most prominent environmental crisis in the world.
Green index areas between Meiji Jingu Stadium and Tokyo Tower in Japan
Polar bear project
By Andreas Weith - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0,
We are working on this project called 'P project' which stands for 'Polar bear project'.
The purpose of the project is to save polar bears and stop global warming in general. To prevent climate change, we need to expand using regenerative energy system rather than maintain current use of fossil fuels which release large amounts of carbon dioxide and a greenhouse gas into the air.
Source by By Korea Water Resources Corporation website
Solar panel is one of the leading regenerative energy systems. However, cutting down mountain or covering rivers to install it is not the best idea since it gives side effects on the environment. This is the reason we wanted to find appropriate areas where we can install solar panel without destroying mountains or rivers. So, we made a conclusion that flat roofs of houses and buildings are the best choice.
By TonyTheTiger, CC BY-SA 3.0, By Andrewglaser at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0
Also, flat roofs are very suitable place to fill with plants that would affects to decrease green house gases. In many researches, it has been proved that greenspace in cities can reduce atmospheric CO2. With these ideas, we collected image data from aerial photos and performed image processing with deep learning algorithm to find areas capable of greenizing. A map below shows green index areas in specific region.
For more description of the map, we divided green indexes into four sections. First of all, regenerative energy index represents the ratio of areas where solar panels are already installed. The index shows how much regenerative energy depolyed in a specific area.
Potential regenerative energy index represents the ratio of areas where facilities such as solar panels or trees can be installed. Flat roof named as 'good roof' in the image below can be a strong candidate for installing solar panels or roof garden of the areas.
Green index represents the portion of green areas where trees or grass exists.
And potential green index represents the ratio of areas where trees or grass can be planted.
Greenizing Visualization in Japan
As shown in the graph above, Chiba has the highest ratio of green index since there's lots of mountains located in the city comparing to others. This means there's not enough buildings and houses which are capable of installing solar panels or trees. Therefore, this city records the lowest rates to other indexes.
Also, there is one thing noticeable that the cities of Tokyo and Osaka recorded lower rates of regenerative energy index (solar panel) than Kyoto, despite of the fact that they have more locations to setup solar panels (good roof) . Therefore, we can interpret this result that there are many possibilities to greenize these cities as long as there are enough spaces to exploit where regenerative energy systems like solar panels can be installed .
Greenizing Visualization in U.S
