Pollution that is not lawful harms both the environment and people. Due to corporate pressure and limited budget, authorities rarely enforce rules and regulations against outdated industrial facilities.
To combat toxic emissions, local governments have the power to penalise people who cause harmful incidents. The issue is that certain businesses regularly cross the line daily, and environmental protection organisations lack the manpower necessary to monitor plants around-the-clock.
The ‘Spot the Toxic Cloud’ initiative
To combat this challenge, Greenpeace Netherlands and FrisseWind.nu are teaming up with Eindhoven-based FruitPunch AI to promote the ‘Spot the Toxic Cloud’ initiative. The goal is to identify toxic emissions from the Tata Steel factories in IJmuiden (Netherlands).
FruitPunch AI is an Eindhoven-based collective that uses AI for the benefit of society. The algorithms they use to distinguish between typical smoke clouds and harmful ones will be created by their international community of AI professionals.
Environmental group Greenpeace is committed to a planet that is green and peaceful. The firm advocates for the reduction of emissions from polluters including Tata Steel, Schiphol, Rabobank, KLM, and Shell.
Greenpeace will join environmentalists in a protest against Tata Steel’s pollution on June 24 and call for the immediate shutdown of the factory’s most hazardous sections.
Monitoring illegal air pollution by large factories
Through the website spotdegifwolk.nl, users can now report potentially dangerous emissions. The website claims to have received a lot of traffic right away; after roughly two weeks, there were over 4,000 reports and more than fifty hazardous cloud sightings.
The mission of FruitPunch AI is to broaden the influence of this initiative.
The AI community will create an algorithm that can instantly confirm the existence of a toxic cloud using the complaints submitted by spotdegifwolk.nl visitors. In this way, the work of the ‘cloud spotters’ will become even more valuable.
According to a statement, AI can one day even make it feasible for illicit emissions to be identified entirely automatically.
Reports to algorithms
At the moment, webcam images from Tata Steel’s facilities are sent straight to the ‘Spot the Toxic Cloud’ website. Many people follow the smoke and vapour coming from the plants of the steel company there.
They can recognise which clouds are harmful with a few easy instructions and can notify dangerous emissions right away.
Action can then be taken by the Environmental Service of the North Sea Canal Area, which is in charge of monitoring and implementing Tata Steel’s environmental licence.
By merging the reports and the footage, a Machine Learning model can be developed to detect when there is a problem in the video footage. Within ten weeks, FruitPunch AI says it will programme and execute an AI system with the help of fifty community volunteers.
In this way, every report helps in the ongoing observation of this major polluter and the development of an algorithm that can be quickly applied to the observation of additional polluting companies globally.
Buster Franken, CEO and co-founder of FruitPunch AI, says, “We are proud that an influential organisation like Greenpeace chose to collaborate with us. Thanks to our network of AI experts and enthusiasts, we are indeed able to take this project a few steps further.”
“It’s even more satisfying that with the results, we can support many more similar initiatives worldwide. This initiative perfectly illustrates what we mean by ‘AI for Good’, our central mission.”
Willem Wiskerke of Greenpeace Nederland adds, “We are very pleased with this great collaboration. It takes the involvement of the local community around the major polluter to a higher level.”
“However, it also feels a bit contradictory that we have to take on tasks that the government should perform themselves. We are now organising the oversight that the Environmental Service neglects.”
“This clearly demonstrates that there is still much room for improvement within the government in terms of protecting citizens’ health from major polluters like Tata Steel,” Wiskerke adds.
About Fruitpunch AI
The company was founded in 2018 by Buster Franken and Sako Arts. FruitPunch AI aims to build a worldwide community of ‘AI for Good’ engineers. This is to solve the world’s greatest problems through education programmes.
The platform lets AI engineers collaboratively solve ‘AI for Good Challenges’ to train their AI skills with partners like Stanford University, the European Space Agency, and WWF. Companies use it to upskill and retain their current workforce and find new, real-world vetted AI talent.
In their ‘AI for Good Challenges’, they tackle problems with volunteers for organisations working on Sustainable Development Goals.
Read the orginal article: https://siliconcanals.com/news/fruitpunch-ai-to-monitor-illegal-air-pollution/
