Esther Githinji
- @EstherGithinji
- | She/Her
WILDLABS
Fauna & Flora
The AI for the Planet Alliance
The AI for the Planet Alliance was created by Startup Inside, with BCG and BCG X as knowledge partners, and in collaboration with the AI for Good Foundation; the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP); the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO); the UN Office of Information and Communications Technology; and the AI for Good Foundation.
In 2022, the AI for the Planet Alliance announced its first Call for Solutions focused on advancing promising AI solutions that combat climate change. This May, they announced - Albo Climate, Conservation X Labs, and Husk Power Systems as the winners among 10 extraordinary finalists.
Discover the 10 Finalist Projects
About:
AI for the frontlines of the biodiversity crisis. Conservation X Labs’ Sentinel upgrades wildlife monitoring tools — like trail cameras and acoustic recorders — with revolutionary and intuitive AI technology, processing environmental data in real-time as it’s collected.
How Sentinel helps the climate:
Sentinel is built to give you information from the wild in minutes instead of months. This eliminates the need for the huge amounts of time and resources otherwise spent checking field sensors, replacing batteries and SD cards, and processing data manually. As a result, we are reducing the amount of carbon emissions released through less fuel and power used in day-to-day workflows.
How the project leverages AI/analytics:
Sentinel is an all-in-one AI product from model training to data processing on field sensors. Our devices and software make using AI intuitive and manageable, even in the most remote parts of the world.
Discover here
About:
AI parametric insurance for climate risk transfer.
How Yokahu helps the climate:
Climate change disproportionately affects the global south. We are a solution that provides financial resilience to these populations for the first time. Historically less than 10% of economic loss in the global south has been insured. We create the solutions these communities need and allow the global insurance industry to reach them.
How the project leverages AI/analytics:
Yokahu uses the latest in data science and artificial intelligence to develop advanced risk models on which to base new products. Our in-house data science team is adept in the latest geospatial predictive modeling techniques, including Monte Carlo & Markov Chain simulation, extending existing climate models for better near-future forecasting, and directed graphs & Entropic superposition modeling.
Discover here
About:
Powered by AI and satellite data, Albo Climate, established in 2019 in Tel Aviv, has developed state-of-the-art remote sensing technology for carbon removal and land-use monitoring, thereby creating a new paradigm of transparency and scalability in Nature-Based Climate Solutions.
How Albo Climate helps the climate:
By applying proprietary AI algorithms to satellite data, Albo Climate precisely quantifies and maps land use and carbon dynamics at high accuracy and resolution, deploying next-generation digital MRV (Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification) and catalyzing carbon financing to reach gigaton-level of naturebased CO2 removal. Albo Climate aims to unlock the massive potential of Nature-Based Solutions to sequester atmospheric carbon and mitigate the adverse effects of climate change while increasing the accuracy, confidence, and transparency of nature-based carbon offsetting strategies.
How the project leverages AI/analytics:
Albo Climate leverages AI to provide accurate and scientific data on carbon removal in high-impact Nature-based Solutions. Albo developed a suite of AI models to quantify and monitor carbon removal both above ground and below ground (Soil Organic Carbon), making our technology deployable to any ecosystem.
Discover here
About:
Using AI to protect and restore nature to help solve climate change.
How Pachama helps the climate:
Nature could contribute as much as 30% of what’s needed to meet this decade’s Paris Agreement goals. However, today’s carbon market has not managed to make a significant dent in global carbon emissions. The market has also suffered from well-publicized concerns about credit quality, damaging trust in the market. Pachama helps businesses confidently invest in nature to meet their climate goals today and make long-term strategies for the future. Harnessing the latest advancements in remote sensing and machine learning, we rigorously evaluate existing forest projects to find the highest quality credits and start new reforestation and conservation projects from the ground. Pachama is building a digital measurement, reporting, and verification platform that will help deliver high-quality and transparent crediting at a fraction of the time and cost of today’s traditional methods. This modern future will bring more high-quality projects to the market, allow businesses to make more informed carbon investment decisions, and drive more funding to the communities restoring and protecting the land. Since Pachama was founded, it has evaluated over 150 forest carbon projects globally and started a number of new restoration and conservation projects in Brazil, Mexico, and the United States. 2.3M tons of CO2e has been avoided or removed as a result of investments in carbon credits through the Pachama marketplace.
How the project leverages AI/analytics:
Harnessing the latest advancements in satellite imagery, remote sensing, and machine learning, Pachama evaluates the carbon stored in our forests and monitors forest growth over time. Pachama’s remote sensing-based machine learning models can observe forest change both within a project and the surrounding region, enabling a data-driven approach to computing a project’s emissions impact. Without a satellite view of the landscape, status quo crediting often relies on assumptions and varied calculation methods that can result in over-crediting. Pachama’s technology aims to produce high-quality, transparent, and scalable crediting that can restore nature globally.
Discover here
About:
Xylem’s WWNO analytics and optimization algorithms help utilities unlock the power of their system data to manage and operate their wastewater and stormwater networks and achieve greater compliance with local water quality requirements and regulations.
How WWNO helps the climate:
WWNO helps the climate by helping water managers optimize the assets they already own to reduce combined and sanitary system overflows, reducing the stress on receiving water bodies and reducing the amount of construction required to achieve regulatory compliance.
How the project leverages AI/analytics:
WWNO’s analytics use machine learning and AI to amass large system data sets and run thousands of simulations in a highly efficient and real time manner. The near real time analytical outputs can be presented and used across a water utility to inform management, operations, and other stakeholders.
Discover here
About:
Full-stack Aquaculture Platform To Bring Sustainability Through AI & Satellite Remote Sensing.
How Aquaconnect helps the climate:
Our platform quantifies the emission from the pond and measures the carbon footprint. This is the first step towards seafood decarbonization is to understand the impact on the ecosystem.
How the project leverages AI/analytics:
We use AI and Deep Learning models to identify the Pond boundaries, Differentiate Shrimp and fish ponds, Predict the Days of Culture, and current pond status and capture the pond parameters through satellite providers.
Discover here
About:
Kanop is an AI-powered SaaS platform to measure the environmental benefits provided by nature-based projects around the world.
How Kanop helps the climate:
By 2030, nature-based solutions are projected to account for one-third of all carbon mitigation worldwide. Measurement, Reporting, and Verification (MRV) is crucial for effective climate action and is necessary for evaluating the climate impact of nature-based solutions. Our platform enables nature-based project developers of all sizes to scale MRV without incurring cost overruns, making it easier to identify success metrics. These benefits will drive the global development of impactful nature-based projects, resulting in increased carbon removal and reduced carbon emission to combat climate change and promote biodiversity restoration in ecosystems where these projects are implemented.
How the project leverages AI/analytics:
AI is the foundation of Kanop's value proposition. We apply state-of-the-art machine learning models to earth observation data in order to accurately assess the climate benefits projects provide. We build and train proprietary models so that they are tailored to deal with the different types of remote sensing images (optical and radar), different spatial and temporal resolution, on different types of projects.
Discover here
About:
Husk uses AI to accelerate access to reliable and affordable energy and drive economic growth and better living standards for the 10% of the world population still living in energy poverty.
How Husk Power Systems helps the climate:
Husk Power Systems offers a climate win-win, for both mitigation and adaptation. For mitigation, it displaces diesel generators that still dominate rural Africa and Asia, while also supporting its consumers to shift to more energy-efficient appliances and machinery and thus reduce their carbon footprint. Husk supports MSMEs by transitioning from diesel to solar power and provides an average of 30% savings on monthly energy costs, which allows businesses to invest in local communities, hire more workers and promote economic growth. This transition also leads to 80% of diesel generators being taken offline, reducing CO2 emissions, NoX, particulate matter, and noise pollution. Husk's efforts contribute to a cleaner, healthier, and more sustainable environment. From an adaptation perspective, minigrids also provide more climate resilient energy infrastructure that can better withstand climate disruptions like flooding, drought and other extreme weather events.
How the project leverages AI/analytics:
Husk Power Systems leverages AI and analytics to revolutionize the management and scaling of its minigrids. Its innovative technology platform automates asset management and enables optimized utilization, service, and billing automation using IoT, smart meters and a digital customer platform. This platform with advanced AI can remotely manage thousands of assets autonomously at once, allowing for easy addition of new services and geographies. Through this technology, Husk is disrupting the traditional minigrid industry and accelerating its scaling efforts, aiming to build 5,000 minigrids by 2030.
Discover here
About:
Digital climate protection products for farmers.
How Sprout helps the climate:
Sprout provides farmers with the tools to transition with climate change by offering digital protection products such as early warning systems for crop weather risk Sprout Alerts and helping recover from extreme weather events with parametric insurance. These tools make it possible for farmers to make on-farm investments in sustainable agriculture.
How the project leverages AI/analytics:
Sprout uses machine learning alongside our farm-level data to improve our climate-based products. We have worked with NASA Harvest to map where coffee is grow in Kenya using and are estimating production levels using climate variables. We leverage satellite data and geospatial data to reduce costs and improve accuracy. create data that’s used in parametric insurance we design.
Discover here
About:
Kayrros helps governments & companies accurately measure wildfire risk to protect what matters.
How Kayrros wildfire monitoring helps the climate:
Kayrros enables climate adaptation, prevention and mitigation thanks to reliable data. Businesses and public authorities use our risk maps and analytics to predict the likelihood of wildfires, identify areas and populations at risk and implement risk mitigation strategies.
How the project leverages AI/analytics:
AI and advanced analytics are paramount to process a large volume of satellite imagery and fuse together the ~20 risk drivers (vegetation, urban expansion, slope, proximity to infrastructure...) included in the wildfire risk model. Advanced data analytics is used to refresh the risk model and generate new risk maps on a monthly basis. IA is also trained to detect high-risk zones and display the driving risk factors at the asset or area level
Discover here
Reference content/AI for the Planet Call for solutions
Add the first post in this thread.