Cities are major drivers of climate change and particularly vulnerable to its effects, yet they struggle to access financial flows to implement net-zero programmes and address their citizens’ eco-anxiety. They do, however, have a relevant asset in achieving net-zero emissions and funding climate-related projects: trees.
Massive tree-planting schemes, a mega-trend in cities’ efforts to achieve net-zero, could also be a source of income through the sale of carbon credits. However, carbon markets are incredibly complex, and it is also discouraging when there is a low sapling survival rate due to a lack of watering support during trees’ first years of life. Green City Makers simplifies the benefits cities can obtain from voluntary carbon markets while reducing eco-anxiety among citizens with space data, AI and civic watering campaigns. The data Green City Makers gathers from remote sensing, the IoT and open sources is integrated through the implementation of AI models in order to: a) identify urban trees that lack irrigation; b) calculate their water needs; and c) develop solutions for cities and our business model. Green City Makers has been successfully implemented in 53 cities on three continents.

 

“Green City Makers – The urban adaptation to climate change can benefit greatly from introduction of the new forms of citizen engagement and carbon credits marketplace. Green City Makers demonstrated the overarching vision on the combination of EO data, Copernicus Services, AI, and IoT to deliver the solution that can provide Voluntary Carbon Offsets at a significant scale.”
Anna Burzykowska, Copernicus Innovation Officer, European Space Agency (ESA)

 

A Piece of Lemon Cake – Design Factory
Laura Lorenzo, Vika Oseyko, Oleksandra Bulenok,
Nuno Correia, Ana Rita Santos, Miguel Almeida,
Prof Dagmar Haase, Prof Vasco Mantas, Prof Kwi-Gon Kim
laura@apieceoflemoncake.com