Eddiegah/GalamseySentinel

Satellite Intelligence for Illegal Mining Detection in Ghana # 🛰️ GalamseySentinel ### Satellite Intelligence for Illegal Mining Detection in Ghana **A decision-support tool for environmental agencies and NGOs.** Detects likely illegal artisanal gold mining ("galamsey") from free satellite imagery, classifies it against other land-cover changes, and ranks sites by real environmental severity — so agencies know *which sites to act on first*, not just *that something changed*. **⚙️ Setup** · **🧪 Methodology** · **🌊 Monitoring Regions** · **🚀 Deploy** · **⚠️ Responsible Use** --- ## ⚠️ Read Before Using > **This is a research prototype, not an official government tool.** This tool is designed for **institutional users only** — environmental agencies, NGOs, and researchers operating within established legal and operational frameworks. It is not a real-time surveillance platform and must not be used to direct enforcement action without human verification. **Real systems already exist.** The Ghana Minerals Commission digital monitoring programme, the **National Mine Surveillance Centre (NMSC)**, and NGO satellite-analysis efforts are already deployed in Ghana. GalamseySentinel demonstrates a specific technical methodology — *change classification + severity prioritization* — that could complement those systems. **On safety:** Given documented violence against anti-galamsey enforcement personnel in Ghana, this tool separates the institutional view (precise coordinates, restricted) from the public view (aggregate statistics only, no actionable locations). --- ## 🌍 The Problem Illegal artisanal gold mining — **galamsey** — is one of Ghana's most severe environmental crises. | Impact | Scale | |--------|-------| | 🏞️ Contaminated water bodies | Over 60% of Ghana's rivers affected | | 🌳 Forest destruction | Thousands of hectares lost annually | | ☠️ Mercury poisoning | Downstream communities at risk | | 🚨 Enforcement capacity | Severely outpaced by rate of activity | **The core problem isn't detection — it's …