Vespa vellutina

The Asian wasp (Vespa Velutina) is a species native to Southeast Asia that, it seems, began its European journey through France in 2005. The first nest arrived by boat from China and, since then, it has spread across Europe. These little insects love the Atlantic climate and enjoy nesting in rural and urban environments throughout Northern Spain.
They choose, especially, the vegetation of our oak groves and acacia forests to build their nests and barracks. However, these wasps pose a significant threat to our environment. To feed their larvae, they capture bees and other species of insects, causing serious imbalances in ecosystems.
Likewise, they also cause serious damage to fruit trees and the hives of honey-producing bees, generating a negative impact on rural areas.

In Kopuru, an online platform that launches open data challenges, they have echoed this problem and want to show that Data Science can help to minimize the impact of these small predators. That is why they have launched a new challenge: the “vespa velutina data challenge”. To participate, you will have to register on Kopuru and show that you are capable of developing a model that accurately predicts the number of nests of this wasp for each municipality in the Territory of Biscay for the year 2020.
Better planning will undoubtedly help to better manage this invasive species and reduce its impact. Throughout the next two assignments, we will guide you through the initial steps of data preparation and model training. It will then be up to you to decide whether you want to go on with the challenge and send in your solutions to opt for the prize.
Those students that submit a solution to the challenge will receive extra credit based on the value of their submissions.

We recommend to do not use the scikit-learn library for this third assignment. All exercises can be solved using Pandas.