Work-in-Progress: Data Science Framework for Environmental Protection Education

Abstract

In recent decades, the overpopulation on our planet has had an impact on environmental change. Addressing and understanding such changes in a reliable manner requires contemporary data-science knowledge and methodologies since the amount of information available online has been increasing at an exponential rate. Additionally, to draw meaningful conclusions and predict certain events in terms of environmental changes, one must be familiar with existing natural processes. Thus, combining data science with knowledge about global conditions in the world and how they impact Earth’s biosphere, would highly benefit the understanding of possible consequences in the environment. Since our planet is a complex, dynamic system that is likely to change, one must be knowledgeable about the global climate system as a whole. As well, one must understand its processes and interactions with the environment to be able to understand and work on preventing the potential inevitable drastic circumstances for living. This paper addresses the issue of environmental changes and presents a solution in the form of academic education, which is currently in progress, and also related to the COVID-19 issues. As shown in the results section, this type of education aims to teach students about the basics of data science and how to interpret and visualize information related to current environmental changes.