OpenLitterMap.com – Open Data on Plastic Pollution with Blockchain Rewards (Littercoin)

• Main Author: Seán Lynch
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: SpringerOpen 2018-06-01
• Series: Open Geospatial Data, Software and Standards
• Subjects: OpenLitterMap; Littercoin; Plastic pollution; Open data; Blockchain; Machine learning
• Online Access: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40965-018-0050-y

Abstract OpenLitterMap rewards users with Littercoin for producing open data on litter. Open data on the geospatial characteristics of litter provide means of invoking and evaluating responses to plastic pollution. OpenLitterMap currently works as a web app on all devices with native mobile apps in development. The stack includes the integration of the Laravel PHP Framework on the backend; Vue for frontend reactivity; NativeScript-Vue for mobile apps; Bulma for CSS; Leaflet for web-mapping; Turf.js for geospatial analysis; the Ethereum Blockchain for tokenization; Stripe; ChartJS; AWS; and more. Anywhere from a single cigarette butt to the contents of an entire beach or street clean can be logged in a single geotagged photo. Alternatively, a simple index may be used if litter is incalculable. The open data includes an increasing 100+ pre-defined types of litter; 20+ corporate brands; verification status; coordinates; timestamp; phone model; the latest OpenStreetMap address at each location; and the litter presence as a Boolean. To date, 100% of all submitted data (~ 8200 photos, ~ 28,000 litter from over 150 contributors) has been manually verified which is being used to develop machine learning algorithms.