📅 Day 1: Microplastics Detection, Characterization & Environmental Data Analytics
- Microplastics and nanoplastics: sources, pathways, and environmental fate
- Primary and secondary microplastics in water, soil, sediment, food chains, and air
- Sampling and contamination-control protocols for microplastics research
- Detection technologies: microscopy, FTIR, Raman spectroscopy, Py-GC/MS, SEM, and image-based analysis
- Data preprocessing for particle count, size, morphology, polymer type, and concentration
- AI-assisted image analysis and classification opportunities in microplastics research
🛠️ Hands-on Activity:
- Microplastics Dataset Cleaning & Exploratory Analytics in Google Colab: Participants will work with a sample microplastics dataset to clean particle-level data, analyze polymer types, visualize size distribution, identify dominant microplastic categories, and generate basic contamination insights.
🧰 Tools Covered: Google Colab, Python, Pandas, NumPy, Matplotlib, OpenRefine, Zotero
📅 Day 2: Risk Assessment, Exposure Pathways & Spatial Distribution Mapping
- Microplastics exposure pathways in aquatic, terrestrial, atmospheric, and food systems
- Risk assessment frameworks: hazard identification, exposure assessment, toxicity relevance, and uncertainty
- Environmental concentration indicators and contamination indices
- Polymer-specific, size-specific, and shape-specific risk considerations
- Spatial analysis of microplastics contamination hotspots
- Data-driven prioritization of high-risk zones and vulnerable ecosystems
🛠️ Hands-on Activity:
- Microplastics Risk Scoring & Hotspot Mapping: Participants will create a simple risk scoring model using sample concentration, polymer type, particle size, and location-based variables. They will visualize contamination hotspots and classify locations into low, moderate, and high-risk categories.
🧰 Tools Covered: Google Colab, Python, Scikit-learn, QGIS, Google Earth Engine, Plotly
📅 Day 3: Mitigation Pathways, Circular Economy & Intervention Strategy Design
- Microplastics mitigation across product design, wastewater systems, packaging, textiles, and industrial processes
- Wastewater treatment, filtration, membrane systems, and advanced removal technologies
- Circular economy strategies for plastics reduction and material recovery
- Life Cycle Assessment perspectives for plastic alternatives and interventions
- Policy, regulation, ESG, and extended producer responsibility considerations
- Designing measurable intervention roadmaps for microplastics reduction
🛠️ Hands-on Activity:
- Circular Intervention Strategy & Mitigation Dashboard: Participants will develop a basic intervention-prioritization framework that compares mitigation options based on feasibility, impact, cost, circularity potential, and environmental benefit. The output can be visualized as a simple decision matrix or dashboard.
🧰 Tools Covered: OpenLCA, KNIME Community Edition, Orange Data Mining, Python, Plotly, Streamlit
