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The Great Capstone Unveiling

Source: Alabama Department of Agriculture and Industry

A few weeks have passed since my last blog post. In that time, quite a bit has happened on my capstone journey! Most importantly, I had the good fortune of landing a project centered on two things that I hold near and dear to my heart: the environment and food.

For the next 8-9 months, I’ll be working with a local company called AgBiz Logic which was founded at my university . This company has built and continues to build an enterprise level suite of decision making tools for agriculturalists. The tools range in function from financial budgeting to environmental accounting. While both tasks can generate headaches in a flash, the latter is infamously gnarly and increasingly important.

As discussed in this New York Times article, true cost accounting is certainly on the radar for the well studied economist. However, while most farmers care deeply about the health of their crops and land, it’s probably a stretch to assume that all farmers have the time and willingness to dive deep into the hidden costs of their industry.

This is exactly the kind of thing that software can help with. Using AgBiz Logic’s platform, farm workers can specify their plan and any alternatives that they have access to. Those plans can then be compared by many values, such as predicted profit or carbon production. These tools allow farmers to fine tune both their economic and environmental impacts, making it easy to find a way to balance the two.

Source: DeepAI Image Generator

At the moment, there is no way for AgBiz Logic to account for the environmental impacts of the chemicals their clients are using. That’s where my team and I come in!

We’ve been tasked with the design and development of a section of the AgBiz Environment module. On a high level, we plan to incorporate a metric developed at Cornell University called the Environmental Impact Quotient (EIQ). This will give users the ability to compare the impact of individual chemicals and entire agricultural plans in aggregate. The metric itself takes into account the negative effects of a given chemical on the environment. You might be wondering how scientists can possibly come up with a single number to evaluate that. Well, the formula in all its glory is shown below.

“…where DT = acute dermal toxicity in mammals, C = chronic toxicity in mammals, SY=systematicity, F = fish toxicity, L = leaching potential, R = surface loss potential, D = bird toxicity, S = soil residue half-life, Z = bee toxicity, B = beneficial arthropod toxicity, and P= plant surface residue half-life.”  Source: The EIQ User Guide

Hopefully that cleared things up nicely for you.

If it didn’t, just know that the EIQ is a well studied metric for evaluating the expected damage a specific chemical can do to the following three parties:

  • You when you eat the food the chemical was used on.
  • Animal bystanders who live on or near the crop and soil.
  • The folks who used the chemical in the first place.

This is a very exciting opportunity for me. From the beginning of my computer science path, I’ve yearned to find ways of bending the power of computing to the benefit of the environment. For a long time, that felt like one of those goals that you come back to once you have some skills or once society changes tack. However, I’ve found out that if you keep your eye on the ball, you often wind up catching it. So here I am, getting to work on a problem that I’m passionate about by using skills that I’m passionate about. Who wouldn’t love that?

Till next time,

Robin

Photo of Robin by Kelsea DeFillipis
https://www.kelseadphotography.com

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About me

Introductions

Robin excited at a butterfly exhibit in Costa Rica

Hello World! My name is Robin. If you’re reading this, you’ve found your way to my blog series all about the final stretch of my Computer Science journey at Oregon State University.  Over the next 9 months, I plan to fill this site with insights on my struggles and triumphs as I wrangle the last year of my undergraduate degree. I invite you all to join me on what I truly hope will be an exciting academic finale.

Every learning experience is best served by starting with the foundation of the subject. In this case, I suppose that’s me, so I’d better give you a little background on just who I am.

View of the Yaquina Head Lighthouse

I live in beautiful Newport on the astounding Oregon Coast. This region often transcends gorgeous and moves on to ridiculously magical. Given the good fortune of having grown up in this town, you’d think that I’d be used it by now. Instead, my appreciation of the nature surrounding my home has only deepened. I spend a happy amount of time standing around and gawking at nature.

Even though I’m chronically busy with school, work, or being slack jawed at a good view, I find plenty of time to engage in my favorite personal pursuits.

Robin in the good spot in Mexico

Surfing and traveling are easily my favorite hobbies on the planet. It’s a fantastic coincidence that the two go together like peanut butter and granola. I’ve had the chance to go on a handful of surf trips down south, and each time leaves me with a sense of lasting gratitude for the opportunity.

I’m very passionate about the ocean. However, since I’ll probably never make it as a pro surfer, I have to find other ways to express my interest in the sea professionally. For the last 6 months, I’ve been lucky to work with Greg Wilson and his colleagues in the OSU Coastal Imaging Lab. There, I get to spend time honing my programming skills on an unexpected challenge: Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV).

An example result from JuliaPIV

There will be more to come on this subject in later posts. For now, I’ll just define PIV as a computational process in which the individual velocities of particles suspended in a fluid are tracked and measured. The resulting information can be combined with LiDAR data to programmatically understand the changes in velocity and spatial positioning of an ocean wave in the coastal environment! Greg hopes to use this technique to study wave run-up on beaches, perhaps discovering insights into coastal erosion.

Hopefully this post gave you a brief idea of who I am, and the things that inspire me day-to-day. I’m looking forward to writing more posts as the year goes on.

I’d love to hear from any of my readers, so leave a comment below if you’d like to hear more about a particular topic I’ve covered. Otherwise, catch you all next time!

— Robin