BioacAI - Bioacoustic AI for wildlife protection

From 01-10-2023 to 30-09-2027

Description

The biodiversity crisis is coming into sharp focus. The World Economic Forum ranked biodiversity loss as one of the top 5 global risks, both in impact and likelihood, for the first time in 2020 and again in 2021. Continental-scale assessments warn of population declines in major taxa such as birds and insects. Yet data for monitoring biodiversity change remain incomplete - spatially, temporally and taxonomically. Changes are further driven by humanity's changing actions: biodiversity is affected by climate, but even more strongly by land-use changes, including land-use changes intended as climate mitigations - as recently highlighted in a joint report by the UN panels IPBES and IPCC. To stabilise biodiversity trends and assess ecosystem restoration interventions, it is crucial to monitor the world's wildlife better, faster, and to provide rapid intelligence that can enable us to manage these risks.

Sound recording is a cheap, rapid and powerful way to monitor many key animal species, and modern machine learning can radically improve its scale and precision. However, there are two barriers: AI-enhanced tools for bioacoustic monitoring are at a low readiness level, with few end-to-end solutions available; and there is a big skills gap - no current training programme produces experts with skills spanning acoustics, artificial intelligence (AI) and zoology/ecology.

The BioacAI doctoral network is designed to address exactly these issues. Our research programme develops new AI methods directly within the context of acoustic wildlife monitoring, using devices from leading European bioacoustics companies, in active wildlife monitoring deployments. Our training programme provides "full stack" bioacoustic AI skills and targeted research experience, to build the next generation of professionals - the people who innovate with technology to monitor and understand animals at unprecedented global scale and detail.

Team

• Toon van Waterschoot, Co-promoter

Financing

Funding: EU Funding - European Funding

Program/Grant Type: MSCA ITN - Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions International Training Networks