The development of innovation initiatives for Big Data analysis with Artificial Intelligence techniques has great potential to make our planet more sustainable and save elephants.
The ability of technology to surprise us is gigantic. We are used to improving the day to day of people, but its development also has great potential to make our world more sustainable, helping the survival of endangered species.
This is the case for elephantunfortunately, these animals are threatened by human actions against their natural habitat. The number of specimens in the African continent has fallen by 70% in the last 10 years. One of the activities that contributes to generating this dramatic situation is the poaching.
And is that, incredible as it may seem, there is a considerable number of individuals who are dedicated to hunt elephants to trade with the ivory of their tusks or simply to display them as hunting trophies. Travel agencies even offer this practice as a tourist attraction activity.
Combat elephant poaching
To tackle these problems, we count on the strength of the [innovación tecnológica]. A good example of this is the Conservation Metrics programme, which uses Machine Learning to analyze large amounts of data and measure the specific parameters of natural environments from the statistical rigor.
Another branch of the campaign to help prevent the disappearance of elephants from the African jungle is the Elephant Listening Project. Among its actions is the installation of acoustic sensors with which researchers can monitor throughout the day the activity of pachyderms through their berrides. Thus, they can identify each animal, monitor its status, and calculate the existing population, contributing to increase their safety.
Artificial Intelligence and Big Data to protect the planet
These projects are part of AI for Earth, an initiative launched by Microsoft, which aims to use Artificial Intelligence techniques to achieve solutions that help mitigate the main environmental problems of the planet. The technology multinational has promised invest $ 50 million over the next five years in climate change, loss of biodiversity, water scarcity and agricultural yield.
In addition to the fight against poaching and the protection of elephants, AI for Earth has projects in different fields. Among them, it is worth mentioning Project Premonition, which seeks to establish preventive detection mechanisms for pathogens to eradicate them before they become pandemics. And all thanks to the collection and analysis of genetic information that brings the blood collected by mosquitoes around the world.
In turn, other initiatives use data collected by sensors, drones or satellites to monitor the operation of farms and agricultural plantations, as well as the state of different natural ecosystems. Thanks to analysis of all this information using computational algorithms, researchers can promote the conservation of endangered plants and animals or establish more efficient food production mechanisms.
In short, the development of innovation initiatives for the big Data Analysis with Artificial Intelligence techniques it has great potential to make our planet more sustainable. Once again, technology leads the way to a better world.
