To combat complex challenges such as plastic pollution, we require a proper understanding on characteristics of the problem through time and space. This is one of the problems that the Ocean Cleanup tackles. In the past two years, we supported them in developing a deep learning solution to monitor river plastic. The system is now ready for global scaling.
Marine plastics are a widespread concern to the environment because of its negative impact the marine ecosystem and human health. Quantifying plastic pollution in rivers is essential to mitigate the negative impact, but challenging to realize due to lack of availability of scalable monitoring methods. Together with The Ocean Cleanup, we went through the journey of installing cameras, labeling data, training object detection models and more. Currently, our paper on the study has been submitted, and the cameras, cloud architecture and models are almost ready for scaling. Our talk will take you along our journey, sharing what we have learned.
At Soda science, we aim to create social impact through data science by partnering with challenge experts, such as The Ocean Cleanup.