Students Built Gaming App That May Help Save Indonesia’s Forests

In an aim to protect forests and indigenous peoples, six hundred students have helped pilot an Indonesian crowdsourcing app that turns mapping land across the archipelago into games comparable to Pokemon Go.

The Urundata application creates games using publicly available satellite images. Players can visit a land, scoring points by answering questions on what they see, such as the type of land and what it’s being used for. The data collected by the app will be made publicly available online in hopes to improve land restoration efforts, promote sustainable development, and better protect areas and communities.

“You can choose what kind location you’re interested in – it’s pretty much a game because you collect scores as you are providing answers,” says Ping Yowargana of RESTORE+, a land organization which launched the app and aims to restore land in Indonesia and Brazil. “People can compete with each other – they can change their statuses from ‘volunteer’ to ‘warrior’ of data – and then share on social media.”

“We try to make it fun,” he adds, comparing the app to Pokemon Go. “It gives a good way for learning things and understanding the landscapes in a way that is very different from a classroom or through Wikipedia pages.”