A team of Australian researchers are hoping that artificial intelligence may hold the key to saving the Great Barrier Reef.
The team is developing a real-time global monitoring system that aims to help provide data that would help the planet’s global coral reefs from further decline.
The research is a collaborative project led by the University of South Australia, with contributions from researchers from Victoria and Queensland. The project integrates AI and machine learning with Geographic Information Systems (GIS).
The platform is capable of combining data from a multitude of sources, including underwater images, satellite data, sensor readings, underwater videos and more to provide real-time monitoring and analysis.
By combining all this data, the researchers hope the platform will be able to track coral bleaching across the globe. The mechanism should be able to track new outbreaks, severity and more. The platform will also be able to asses things like biomass, reef fish abundance, size and more.
According to Dr. Abdullahi Chowdhury lead researcher and UniSA data analyst:
“At the moment we have separate models that analyse substantial data on reef health – including bleaching levels, disease incidence, juvenile coral density and reef fish abundance – but these data sets are not integrated, and they exist in silos. Consequently, it is challenging to see the ‘big picture’ of reef health or to conduct large scale, real-time analyses.”
While GIS data expert and Central Queensland University PhD candidate Musfera Jahan added:
“By centralising all this data in real time, we can generate predictive models that will help conservation efforts, enabling earlier intervention. Our coral reefs are dying very fast due to climate change – not just in Australia but across the world – so we need to take serious action pretty quickly.”
You can check out a video about AI and the Great Barrier Reef below.
