OpenLitterMap (https://openlittermap.com/en) empowers you to map and share data on plastic pollution anywhere.
Snap it, tag it, share it.
It’s like Pokémon Go for Tidy Towns!
The data is not just mapped, more importantly, the data is accessible as open data.
This is a work in progress that is only about 5-10% of where it needs to be. Currently, OpenLitterMap.com works on all devices as a web-app which is built mobile first and works like an app. Mobile apps are in development and will launch in June or July 2019.
If you would like to join the global community of people sharing data on plastic pollution:
- Enable location services on your device. Instructions about how to do this are sent out in a welcome email when you sign up. Once activated, your photos will be geotagged and they can be uploaded and automatically mapped.
- Sign up, log in and upload your images.
- Tag x litter in your images. You can tag as little or as much litter in a single image as you want. If there is too much litter, use the Illegal dumping item in the Other category and choose a number between 1-100.
- Submit your image for verification. Once approved, your image will appear on the maps, the data will be made accessible for anyone to access and you get Littercoin for doing the work. We are manually and tediously verifying data to remove any ambiguity from our data which gives it as much legitimacy as possible. This high quality verified data will be also be used to train machine learning algorithms. Some super-users are trusted and their images achieve automatic verification. Users who submit images correctly get rewarded with Littercoin which is the first blockchain token rewarded for the production of geographic information.
- Anyone can download OpenLitterMap data for free as open data which can be used for any purpose without permission. This is essential to advance and democratize science. Otherwise, who will be allowed to produce knowledge on the state of plastic pollution?
This is all being developed by 1 guy (u/littercoin) who began researching litter mapping in 2009 when he was introduced to GIS. After traveling and working as a divemaster in Koh Tao, he came home super-motivated and took out a loan to do 2-masters just to get the methodology right (MSc GIS & Remote Sensing, MSc Coastal & Marine Environments). This one guy then taught himself how to code and is still working on OpenLitterMap today. And he has a few more projects, should he ever get some support.
If you like this work, or maybe you think the development of open data on pollution is really important, OpenLitterMap has crowdfunding built into the platform patreon style with optional once-off donations and monthly subs starting at €5/month which is currently necessary to keep the servers online. Maybe one day we could make a video or pay someone a living wage to write a few lines of very important code? With support, this could have been developed years ago!
If you can’t afford to chip in, that’s cool too. Likes & shares also go a long way!
Litter mapping is a relatively new field of Geographical Information Science that remains largely unexplored – and will continue to remain unexplored when access to data is restricted.
Snap it, tag it, share it.
Welcome, to the Open Pollution Revolution.