Space Apps Challenge 2017

A goal of Picture Post is to get people outdoors to experience the environment and to also contribute to monitoring change-over-time by taking repeat digital photographs at Picture Post sites.

Annette has a post in her New Hampshire backyard – check it out.

We started thinking that if we improved the picture taking activity by automatically collecting a 360^o panorama, we could use technology to annotate pictures with areas of interest – say, draw a circle around a tree that is infested or diseased and ask the user questions about what they see, or ask them to annotate areas of interest and give us feedback.

Once we had those ideas, the possibilities seemed endless for doing some on-the-fly image processing, comparing images, and analyzing change along with weather and satellite data.

This project is just the beginning – we want to develop a kit that will be valuable to researchers, land trust organizations, national parks, environmental protection agencies, and will also continue to engage citizen scientists.

That’s our project. Be sure to watch our video!