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AI for Conservation / Feed

Artificial intelligence is increasingly being used in the field to analyse information collected by wildlife conservationists, from camera trap and satellite images to audio recordings. AI can learn how to identify which photos out of thousands contain rare species; or pinpoint an animal call out of hours of field recordings - hugely reducing the manual labour required to collect vital conservation data.

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HWC Tech Challenge Update: Meet the Judges

WILDLABS Team

20 October 2017 12:00am

Our panel of international experts has been hard at work reviewing the 47 proposals we recieved for innovative technological tools to address human wildlife conflict. The panelists have systematically been assessing the...

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[ARCHIVED] Fish identification computer vision competition

Kate Wing

26 September 2017 8:43pm

Our contest to develop tools that can count, measure, and identify fish from commercial fishing video runs through October 30. Please pass this on to anyone you know who might be...

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Stephanie O'Donnell

29 September 2017 1:00pm

Hi Kate, 

It's really exciting to hear that you've now launched the challenge, congratulations on getting to this point! It's going to be interesting to see what solutions come out of the challenge - please do keep us updated as it progresses if you have time. The challenge is focused on the New England fishery - are you envisaging that this is an approach you can take to scale and eventually extend to other fisheries? 

To add a bit more information for anyone interested, there's actually $50,000 of prizes attached to this challenge:

Place Prize Amount 1st $20,000 2nd $15,000 3rd $10,000 4th $3,000

There is also a wildcard prize:

We're also looking for innovative approaches to solving this fishy problem, even if they don't score in our Top 4. If you want to be eligible for our $2,000 Judges' Choice Award, submit your code on the Submit Report page (available once you've signed up) by the competition end date for review. Our judges will be looking for inventive, novel solutions that can be incorporated into video review programs, so share your most fin-tastic ideas. 

Finally, if you're curious to find out more about what led to the challenge, Kate actually wrote a piece called 'Machine learning, meet the ocean' that we published in the resources area a few months ago. Do have a read!

Cheers,

Steph 

 

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The Greenhouse 2017: Planet Saving Technology Series (Syd, Australia)

Stephanie O'Donnell

19 September 2017 2:01pm

If you're Sydney based, you should already be aware of Greenups, Sydney's longstanding sustainability drinks that happen on the first Tuesday of every month. But what you...

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Stephanie O'Donnell

19 September 2017 2:37pm

If you're interested, you can check out the live recordings from past events (links below take you to the videos):

August: The Blockchain

The Blockchain's potential ability to help leapfrog or change corrupt and inefficient power structures can revolutionize the way we approach issues ranging from the supply chain, financial inclusion, human rights abuses, and modern slavery to environmental, energy, and workforce problems.

One source of shared truth and trusted infrastructure can help NGOs, charities, social entrepreneurs, civil societies and companies achieve their mission.

Come and discover the innovators, leaders, and philosophers in the space showcasing their solutions and meet the technologists who can support your needs.

So what is Blockchain, and is it just hype or is it really a Planet Saving Technology? 

Speakers and Panellists

•  Dr Jane Thomason - CEO Abt Australia, Social Policy Adviser, Devex Impact Strategic Advisory Council, Commentator Blockchain

• Arthur Falls - Director of Media at Consensys / Podcaster, State Change & The Ether Review Podcasts

• Bubba Cook - Pacific Tuna Programme Manager, WWF NZ / Pacific

• Leah Callon-Butler - Member, Advisory Board, RedGrid

• Bridie Ohlsson - External Relations, AgriDigital

 

July: Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality

With it's origins in science fiction, the idea of Virtual Reality has been around since the 1950's, but in the last few years, with the promise of mobile computing, it's suddenly the talk of the town.

Many are excited by the deep immersive nature and empathetic story telling potential of VR/AR and see huge opportunity in awareness raising and shifting public opinion around important issues.

So what is VR, and it's related technology cousin Augmented Reality, an is it a potential Planet Saving Technology?

Speakers and Panellists

We have a bumper, star-studded panel to unpack, explain and explore this promising technology.. 

•  Kim McKay - CEO, Australian Museum

• Brennan Hatton - Founder, Equal Reality (Augmented Reality Development) 

• Parrys Raines - FBGen / Future Business Council / Climate Girl 

• Jennifer Wilson - Creative/Digital Strategist, Founder, Lean Forward 

• Mikaela Jade - CEO, Indigital (Indigenous storytelling with AR) 

• Scott O'Brien - CEO, Humense (Volumetric Video + Virtual Reality) (Panel Moderator)

 

June: Smart Cities and the Internet of Things 

What is a Smart City? How will Smart Cities change the way we organise our lives? Will they bring about the so-called ‘fourth industrial revolution’? 

What is the Internet of Things, and does it have the potential to be a Positive Impact Techonology? What are the opportunities and what are the risks?

We explore all this and more in the first of our deep dives into Planet Saving Technology: Smart Cities and the Internet of Things.

Speakers and Panellists

•  Frank Zeichner - CEO, IoT Alliance Australia

•  Angela Bee Chan - Schneider Electric / Hackathons Australia

•  Ben Moir - Snepo Fablab / WearableX

•  Monica Richter - Low Carbon Futures, WWF Australia.

•  Andrew Tovey - Total Environment Centre, TULIP/Smart Locale (Panel Host)

 

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Deep Learning Project Repository

David J Klein

10 December 2015 7:53pm

Feel free to post links to projects you're aware of using Deep Learning to assist in conservation.  Here's a few to get started. Classification of 121...

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Stephanie O'Donnell

5 August 2016 2:38pm

NOAA Right Whale Recognition Competition, January 2016

364 teams | $10,000 prize

https://www.kaggle.com/c/noaa-right-whale-recognition 

Competition Details:

With fewer than 500 North Atlantic right whales left in the world's oceans, knowing the health and status of each whale is integral to the efforts of researchers working to protect the species from extinction.

Currently, only a handful of very experienced researchers can identify individual whales on sight while out on the water. For the majority of researchers, identifying individual whales takes time, making it difficult to effectively target whales for biological samples, acoustic recordings, and necessary health assessments.

To track and monitor the population, right whales are photographed during aerial surveys and then manually matched to an online photo-identification catalog. Customized software has been developed to aid in this process (DIGITS), but this still relies on a manual inspection of the potential comparisons, and there is a lag time for those images to be incorporated into the database. The current identification process is extremely time consuming and requires special training. This constrains marine biologists, who work under tight deadlines with limited budgets.

This competition challenges you to automate the right whale recognition process using a dataset of aerial photographs of individual whales. Automating the identification of right whales would allow researchers to better focus on their conservation efforts. Recognizing a whale in real-time would also give researchers on the water access to potentially life-saving historical health and entanglement records as they struggle to free a whale that has been accidentally caught up in fishing gear.

From what I can gather, the winning solution was submitted by deepsense.io. They've written a full blog post about it here: 

http://deepsense.io/deep-learning-right-whale-recognition-kaggle/

 

 

 

Jon Van Oast

9 October 2016 12:12am

Wildbook / IBEIS. Open-source effort to combine web-based mark-recapture database with ML/CV photo detection and identification.  http://wildbook.org
[ Full disclosure: I am a member of the non-profit team working on this project! ]

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MIT's SLOOP: machine learning (ML) animal image recognition

Dave Cortright

27 July 2017 2:04am

Joining others in the space like IBEIS and Dr. Frederic Maire from Queensland University of Technology, MIT has a program to do something similar. From the MIT SLOOP...

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Jonno Bourne

27 August 2017 7:20am

It looks like they haven't updated for a couple of years do you know if it is still active or are they changing to a different system like tensor flow?

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Machine learning, meet the ocean

Kate Wing

10 May 2017 12:00am

There is a revolution coming in conservation. Advances in conservation technology are generating more data than ever before on what lives where, who eats who, and what’s disappearing and how fast, but it still requires...

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Welch Labs - Learning to see

Tom Swinfield

31 March 2017 11:10am

For those of you working on image detection systems of whatever kind, I highly recommend the YouTube series Learning to See by WelchLabs. It presents truely beautiful...

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Stephanie O'Donnell

31 March 2017 11:45am

Ah! Thanks for posting this Tom. It's such a well designed, simple to understand video series, and the backing track is utterly delightful.  

 

Given the growing applications of machine learning for conservation, I've been wondering if a 'machine learning 101 for conservation' webinar or article might be a worthwhile resource to look into for our community. In looking for a link to put in here to a UCL course I know exists on this topic, I actually just came across this article: A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO MACHINE LEARNING IN ECOLOGY. Seems that Jon Lefcheck had the same thought as me and got right down to it.

If you're interested in more introductory, practical resources on machine learning, do let me know below! Also, if you know of any other go to tutorials that you've found useful, please share them. 

Steph

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Video: Discover the SMART Approach

The SMART Partnership

20 July 2016 12:00am

The Spatial Monitoring and Reporting Tool (SMART) Partnership combines a ranger-based data collection tool with capacity building and a suite of best practices aimed at helping protected area and wildlife managers...

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Computer Vision to Identify Individual Animals

Jason Holmberg

29 May 2016 4:52am

Here's a demo of the work we're doing to identify individual humpback whales (and other species) using computer vision and A.I. on the IBEIS.org project. https://www....

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Stephanie O'Donnell

6 June 2016 11:17am

Hi Jason, 

Thanks for sharing this demo, it's interesting to see the fluke id process in action. Is this part of the flukebook project? How do you see the project progressing - are there opportunities for people to get involved or challenges it would be helpful to get outside input on? 

Cheers,

Stephanie

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TEAM Network and Wildlife Insights

Eric Fegraus

28 April 2016 12:00am

Operating the largest tropical forest camera trap network globally, TEAM Network has accumulated over 2.6 million images. How can large datasets coupled with new techniques for data management and analysis provide...

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