Flourish

Per the World Bank, the number of individuals affected by natural disaster due to climate change has tripled.  It now totals two billion globally*.  That's approximately 25% of the world population, with billions more facing risk.  To mitigate these impacts, it is imperative to develop inclusive, resilient, and competitive sustainable communities.  And tree and green cover reforestation efforts are top of the list in realizing these sustainable communities. 

For millennia, trees and green cover have pulled carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and protected us from urban heat islands.  It is nature's tried-and-true climate solution that is best worked locally to keep in pace and balance out a community's footprint over time. However, while government and global organizations acknowledge the promise of green cover and reforestation projects in fostering sustainable communities, it has proven expensive, difficult to plan, and even harder to execute without standardized tools.  Communities need tools to intelligently measure, predict, prescribe, prioritize, educate, supply, execute, verify, and maintain their transformation into sustainable communities and manage their footprints over time. Not having standardized tooling has translated into success rates ranging as low as 15-20%**.  Indicating billions in conservation funding has gone to waste, and in aggregate, the collective risk of a catastrophic global climate crisis is worsening for all of us.

For example, beyond the direct challenges of climate change, 'plant a trillion' or 'plant a billion' tree programs are encountering economic, technical, operational, and social obstacles.  Economic challenges arise from haphazard funding and land competition due to private ownership or conflicting projects.  Technical hurdles include unsuitable growing locations and lack of appropriate bio-diverse tree and plant re-forest selections leading to cultivation efforts that are highly vulnerable. Operationally, a focus on planting, often outside of season and with no aftercare or maintenance considerations, has resulted in large efforts that have failed to take root.  Socially, there are missed engagement opportunities to gain valuable insights and collaboration from the local communities most at risk or affected, and therefore, most motivated to achieve successful outcomes. 

SOURCES: *https://www.worldbank.org,**https://e360.yale.edu/,https://www.1t.org, https://www.weforum.org, https://www.nature.org

Solution is a convenient, full-lifecycle, intermediary AI/ML blockchain measurement-marketplace-registry platform that:

• connects federal, state, county, city, town, .org, supplier, partner, and community users
• snapshot measures, forecasts, and trends realized and addressable tree and green cover at a town, city, county, state, and national level 
• pinpoints top growing locations in terms of microclimate, soil, and other factors with exact latitude / longitude coordinate mapping
• matches bio-diverse species, or other actions, to efficiently spawn tree and green cover regeneration at the target growing location to maximize re-forestation results and avoid creating new unintended water, nutrient, or other imbalances 
• confirms exact planting or spawning activity dates in alignment with the latest changing weather and climate patterns
• prioritizes recommendations to achieve maximum cost / benefit impact in concert with macro federal, state, and county views
• reports performance at state, county, city, and town levels against the addressable sustainability opportunity
• drives full-spectrum community engagement by offering paid, service hour, and land use jobs to Community Members in their preferred language 
• connects Suppliers to compete to supply jobs with the materials to execute
• provides detailed instructions and chatbot service for Q&A in preferred language to de-risk execution
• provides an accolade and rating system to help Community Members and Local Supplier heroes land their next gig
• provides Partners new channels to deliver their best-in-class technology and an efficient method to tap into the local carbon economy economy to manage their own footprints
• immutably registers and monitors executed jobs to facilitate the delivery of ongoing maintenance, dynamically inform tree and green cover projections, audit trails, and budget and planning governance

Solution primarily serves:

• Sustainability Leaders at town, city, county, state, and national levels 
• Community Members local to the town, city, county, or state that execute the prescribed local jobs or that privately own land
• Suppliers to provide materials to execute specific local jobs
• Partners to deliver best of breed capabilities through the platform

In one integrated platform, federal, state, county, city, or town Sustainability Leaders will now be able to:

• see and measure actual, predicted and addressable tree and green cover levels at a town, city, county, state, and national level in a common and hierarchical manner to better understand urgency, needs, and where to focus efforts
• receive AI recommendations to understand what are the highest sustainability actions to take in exact detail and in what order at town, city, county, state, and national levels
• create local jobs and drive community engagement with a push of a button, directly from the prioritized recommendations 
• automatically receive Local Supplier offers to supply jobs. without placing a single phone call
• lower current and future execution risk across activities through detailed instructions and dedicated chatbot AI support
• rate, and even celebrate or award, Local Supplier and Community Members' work for future reference
• access a single, common immutable registry to efficiently review job status and history, deliver ongoing maintenance/governance, budget, plan, audit, avoid duplicate / conflicting efforts, and avert fraud

In one integrated platform, Community Members will now be able to efficiently participate in their preferred language on local sustainability jobs with the satisfaction and confidence that their efforts will make a difference directly in their community.  Community Members can get paid immediately (in dollars, with service hours, or other) for completed jobs or land use, receive community hero accolades, and build their star ratings to help land future jobs.

In one integrated platform, Local Suppliers, such as agriculture / forestry or logistics providers now have a new revenue channel to offer materials and services, a platform to raise brand awareness, and receive predictive sales lead capabilities for future projects.

In one integrated platform, Partners now have a new revenue channel to offer their data, technology, and services to deliver best of breed capabilities, increase their economies of scale, and tap the local market to lower their carbon footprint.  

I am an international Model United Nations and Science Honor Society high school leader, who is curious, committed to service, and wants to solve the most prevalent global issues of our time.  As a first generation daughter of a multi-lingual immigrant, and resident of the state considered most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change in the United States*, I am already directly experiencing the permanent and irreversible impacts of higher annual temperatures and increased flooding in my community.  Design and implementation of my submission has been meaningfully guided by my and my peers' direct experience working local environmental cleanup projects.  With this first hand knowledge, I can personally attest to the satisfaction that comes with giving back especially when knowing efforts will have an increased chance of making a difference directly where I live.  It is also why this solution has been designed to pilot in multiple languages with underserved communities, including Indigenous, who are most impacted or at risk of climate change.  With better use and alignment of data, technology and resources, I am certain a full-lifecycle sustainability management platform is within reach and optimistic that we are on the cusp of tapping new economic models to realize sustainable communities, both big and small, into the future.

SOURCE: *https://www.cnet.com

We have established the concept and are sharing an initial limited prototype version for feedback with local school and city office leaders.

This is a large project and there is the potential to accelerate, scale, and add value with the help of government, partners, providers, and community members across the entire platform.  For example, integrate a tree and green cover measurement and prediction solutions, soil and micro-climate identification, forestry data on tree / plant species-hardiness zone pairings,  agriculture / forestry suppliers, cloud partner(s), logistics delivery partner(s), and perhaps even customizable use of private-label ride sharing software(s) solutions.  I hope that applying to Solve will help me elevate this concept / prototype to open these government, partner, provider, and community conversations and help me proactively uncover needs or unknowns across all support areas.

Solution is the first of its kind, full-lifecycle, sustainability management platform.  It recognizes that sustainability is an enormous local opportunity that is not "one and done", but a journey to be worked on at the town, city, county, and state levels over time as footprints change.  Solution uses AI to educate government, community, business, and technology stakeholders on the highest priority sustainability actions to be taken at town, city, county, and state levels and then aligns their interests on a convenient and common measurement-marketplace-registry system with specific features to improve precision and reduce the risk of common economic, technical, operational, and social challenges.  While we are starting in the U.S., solution could operate in other countries where results across counties could be easily aggregated to provide a world wide dashboard to the UN or other world organizations.  Solution could form the basis of the local carbon credit economy.  

increase tree and green cover --> net positive carbon capture --> sustainable communities --> global sustainability

Solution Indicators:

• Sustainability Leader: tree and green cover baseline, current actual, forecasted, addressable
• Community Member: total jobs executed, executed with 5-star rating, forecasted, addressable
• Supplier: total jobs supplied, supplied with 5-star rating, forecasted, addressable
• Partner: total number and % of capabilities delivered through partners, user ratings and feedback

Specific impact goals for a given community or footprint are proposed, measured, and forecasted by the solution and its users.  The platform will then aggregate and track these impact goals and outcomes over time in direct alignment to the UN goals and the following World Bank-inspired guiding principles:

- Sustainable communities and footprints are environmentally sustainable in terms of efficiency as measured by estimated ratio of carbon capture lost versus gained.  

 - Sustainable communities and footprints are resilient to social, economic, and natural shocks. 

- Sustainable communities and footprints are inclusive bringing all dimensions of society into their markets, their services, and their development.

- Sustainable communities and footprints are competitive, productive, and generate jobs for members of impacted or at risk community. 

SOURCE: https://www.worldbank.org/en/t...   

Prototype focuses specifically on offering prioritized jobs and chatbot support to Community Members and Local Suppliers.  It uses cloud-based AI services and mobile software apps. Our roadmap includes direct or partner integration of  GIS and geospatial technology, ancestral technology & practices data, big data, SMS, blockchain, audiovisual media, imaging and sensor technology, Crowd Sourced Service / Social Networks, Internet of Things, and robotic / drones.

I am a high school student volunteering on this prototype submission independently, in my free time (part time), with the help of school and executive advisors.  I have identified five additional student volunteers to recruit to work on specific areas of the platform in summer 2024 part time for pilot as part of an anticipated local city parks department internship.

since January 2024

This project and its outputs align to and regularly practice MIT’s definitions of diversity, equity, and inclusion.  Specifically, 

Diversity: This project involves and reflects the various communities it serves through partnership and open innovation.

Equity: This project and its outputs provides people of all backgrounds a genuine opportunity to thrive. 

Inclusion: This project values and respects its creators, users and stakeholders, including underserved populations, by directly partnering on the design and development of human-centered, inclusive solutions to solve global challenge of sustainable communities and footprints. 

SOURCE: https://solve.mit.edu/dei

Value Propositions:

• For Sustainability Leader users, solution provides best-in-class technology, tools, and resources to achieve community and footprint sustainability objectives with less risk and greater precision through a convenient, safe, intermediary platform that efficiently aligns and engages local community members most motivated to ensure successful outcomes, business and technology partners.
• For Community Member users, solution provides multi-lingual access to flexible and high impact sustainability jobs or private land use inquiries to generate income, to receive immediate payments, and to amass ratings / accolades to help land future jobs, with the added satisfaction of directly improving the communities they live in.  
• For Supplier users, solution is a new channel to increase revenue by supplying jobs with materials, to increase marketing awareness and deepen local relationships, and to receive predictive sales leads for future projects.
• For Providers, solution is a new channel to increase revenue by delivering best-in-class technology, drive scale of economies, and a mechanism to tap into the local carbon economy to offset their own carbon footprint.

Revenue Streams:

• Commissions: solution earns a percentage of total paid for each job executed or for land use extended by Community Members, and a percentage of total paid for supplies provided by Suppliers.
• Interchange Fees: solution earns fees related to payment processing.
• Referral Fees: solution incentivizes users to refer new government, community, and business users.
• Other Services: solution earns fees associated with additional value add services, features, or advertising offered to its users.

Achieving concept, prototype, and first pilot milestones (targeted in summer 2024 as part of an anticipated local city parks department internship) are already happening on a no salary, volunteer basis on a shoestring budget funded by my parents.  Outside of the possibility of advancing in this Solve challenge, I anticipate this project to receive support, donations, and partner investment funding to fully incubate, commercialize, scale,  accelerate, and become self-sustainable as an ongoing concern based on the aforementioned ratio-based revenue streams over time.