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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.

discussion

Realtime video analysis using ML on Raspberry PI

HI, I am looking into using ML to identify a flock of birds from a video camera feed, either color or grayscale, using OpenCV and Python on a Raspberry Pi? Has anyone attempted...

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Hi Andrew,

Yo need to train a lightweight DNN model for bird flocks which can then be deployed on Raspberry Pi. For initial starters, you can look into the below tutorial:

 https://www.pyimagesearch.com/2017/10/16/raspberry-pi-deep-learning-object-detection-with-opencv/

Best

Piyush

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article

FIS Call for Expressions of Interest (closed)

Fisheries Innovation Scotland
WILDLABS community members are invited to submit an Expression of Interest to Fisheries Innovation Scotland (FIS) to participate in two research projects involving conservation tech's role in the future of sustainable...

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event

Making the Most of Tech Tutors Season 2!

WILDLABS Team
WILDLABS is celebrating its five year anniversary! Throughout the rest of 2020, we'll be sharing articles, community features, and case studies showcasing the incredible projects, collaborations, and successes that this...

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WILDLABS Tech Tutors: Season Two

WILDLABS Team
The WILDLABS Tech Tutors are back! Starting this December, join us for our second season and get even more answers to your biggest "how do I do that?" questions of conservation tech. Whether you're a #tech4wildlife...

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funding

Kaggle Competition: Species Audio Detection

Rainforest Connection
Hey Acoustic Monitoring and AI for Conservation community members - don't miss Rainforest Connection's Species Auto Detection Kaggle competition, open for to competitors and teams now! Participants will have the chance...

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event

Weekly Event: OTN Virtual Study Hall

Ocean Tracking Network
Do you track ocean species and want to meet others who are working together to solve marine conservation's big issues with telemetry? Join the Ocean Tracking Network's weekly Virtual Study Halls, taking place every...

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discussion

Google unveils search engine for open data

Dataset Search enables users to find datasets stored across thousands of repositories on the Web, making these datasets universally accessible. Google unveils search...

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I agree – this is a very welcome development, and it’s early days; I’m sure it will improve rapidly though. Whilst recognising that there are lots(!) of excellent data repositories out there already, with necessarily specialist functionality, there’s long been a need for something that can overarch these effectively, a ‘discovery portal of discovery portals’. Hopefully this can help do that.

After a cursory look, a couple of things struck me, from a user perspective: 1 –definitely some odd/limited search results at the moment, but as noted it’s early days – it’ll snowball as data owners get on board and standards adjust accordingly. 2 – more search tools would be beneficial e.g. date range tools, a map/bounding box search tool (cf Microsoft’s FetchClimate tool).

I also wanted to understand a bit more behind how it’s working – I assumed markup but wondered what ‘semantic web’ stuff this is drawing on. This article gives a bit more info, but I wonder how different it is to other efforts in this regard, e.g. how ARIES team have been developing semantic based tools to find best available datasets for ecosystem service modelling.

Final thought – it raises interesting questions and challenges about how to ensure things like quality and suitability are going to be measured objectively. It seems like this is an issue to be tackled as the tool develops and data owners engage more as it grows…

Hi all,

I'm fairly new to conservation technology and just getting acquainted with the extent and problems in the field. Data aggregation, standardisation and storage keep popping up as chronic problems across a lot of areas. Data seems to exist in sort of silos with different filing and access arrangements between them.

I would be interested to hear: Has the google dataset search improved drastically since its inception? Are there alternative solutions out there, or are there efforts to create them?

For example, from the bioacoustics meetup the other day, the vast datasets from the Australian Acoustic Observatory and Cornell Bioacoustics Centre don't seem to show up on google dataset search. 

Andy the ARIES team you mentioned released a preview video of the interface with their ecosystem services modelling software. It seems really cool, is this something that would be useful for researchers outside of strict ecosystem services e.g. distributions of particular species temporally and spatially? What do you think of their software?

I'm not certain I'm asking the right questions here, but I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on any of this if you have any time.

D C

This is great, thanks for sharing.

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article

Using Computer Vision to Protect Endangered Species

Kasim Rafiq
In this article, Fulbright Scholar and National Geographic Explorer Kasim Rafiq discusses the potential to efficiently conduct wildlife surveys using cameras mounted to safari vehicles, as well as the workflow and AI...

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article

Hackathon Opportunity: Vaquita Hacks

The Conservation Project International
Do you have innovative #tech4wildlife ideas that could save one of the most endangered species on earth from extinction? Apply now to join Vaquita Hack, a hackathon for students and early career conservationists!  This...

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discussion

Upcoming AI for Conservation Events and Webinars

Hi everyone,  Starting a thread here so there's a place to share upcoming talks, webinars, workshops and other events that are related to AI for conservation....

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AI for Climate Forum: Lightning Talks

Bonnie Lei, Microsoft AI for Earth - 4pm GMT, October 30

Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_wO6ek5dTSMOmYqeMCDbkoQ

As part of the AI for Climate Forum 2020, we will host a series of Lighting Talks with industry leaders, academic representatives and researchers, NGO leaders, and policymakers; that will share ideas about the future of conservation and the harnessing of exponential technologies in the fight against climate change.

Next Guests:

October 30: Bonnie Lei, Head of Global Strategic Partnerships at AI for Earth/ Microsoft
November 6: Jenny Lawton, Startup Founder, and Innovation Expert

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discussion

Tech Tutors: How do I train my first machine learning model?

Hi wildlabbers,  We're just a few hours away from our first Tech Tutors session with Daniel Situnayake, who will be tackling the question: How do I...

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Hi Wildlabbers,

Just popping in to share this very cool primer for beginners to embedded machine learning from our tutor Daniel Situnayake! If you're interested in learning more about the basics of TinyML, this is a great resource.

Find the link here!

-Ellie

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Training Opportunity: HarvardX TinyML Course

edX
Want to build your professional skills in TinyML? Harvard University and Google TensorFlow are offering a new online Professional Certificate program of 3 skill-building courses, designed to cover the essential "...

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event

Webinar: Advances in Fisheries Electronic Monitoring

SAFET
2020 Seafood and Fisheries Emerging Technology Conference kicks off their webinar series this Thursday, Sept. 24th at 5 PM PT/ 8 PM ET. Register now for New Models, New Applications: Advances in Fisheries Electronic...

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Tech Tutors: Review Session

WILDLABS Team
Missing Tech Tutors? Us too! Catch up on every episode from Season 1, check out some of our community highlights, and find out what we loved most about launching this series in this mid-week Tech Tutors review session....

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article

Sustainable Fishing Challenges: Fishing Gear Innovations

Daniel Steadman
Today, Sustainable Fishing Challenges group leader Daniel Steadman discusses how fishing gear itself could benefit from fresh technological innovations to prevent both environmental damage and damage to species and...

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funding

Challenge: ElephantEdge

hackster.io
Protecting elephants from conservation's most pressing issues like poaching and human-wildlife conflict requires big, bold, and innovative solutions. Hackster.io, Smart Parks, Edge Impulse, Microsoft, and several other...

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Event: StreamingScience's #Tech4Wildlife Thursdays

StreamingScience
Join Conservation Technology Educator Andrew Schulz each Thursday at 7:00pm EST for #Tech4Wildlife Thursdays, a casual chat event with friends from the conservation tech community. Many of these chats will feature...

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BearID To Go

BearID Project
In this article from BearID Project, Director and Software Developer Ed Miller walks us through using their application to identify individual bears from photographs. Ed shows us how to easily use BearID remotely in the...

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funding

Competition: Cornell Birdcall Identification

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology
Put your acoustic monitoring skills to the test in The Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Birdsong Identification Kaggle Competition. Participants will compete to identify as many bird vocalizations as possible in in...

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discussion

Tech Tutors: How do I get started using ML for my camera traps? Building Accurate Project-Specific Models​

Hi Wildlabbers,  We're so excited for our second Tech Tutors session tomorrow with Sara Beery, who will be tackling the question: How do I get started using...

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Hi everyone! 

We've now posted Sara's session to our youtube channel, and I've also popped it up the top of this thread.

The collaborative notes worked really well! I've now updated them to capture what happened in the chat - it should be a helpful companion to go alongside the recording. The notes have links, projects, and key discussions we saw in the chat, and summarise the questions Sara coverd in the discussion as well as the Qs we weren't able to get to (40mins overtime was our limit!). If your question was one of the outstanding ones and you'd like to have it answered, please drop it in the discussion below. 

The notes now also have the participant check ins (such an awesome range of places, projects and interests!) - I'm sharing these as seeing what other people are doing might help you connect with each other. If you see someone you want to connect with, try and find them using  our member direcyour people tab. If you can't, email Ellie and she will see if that person is happy to hear from you before connecting you.

Reminder, registration is open for Carlos' tutorial next week: How do I perform automated recordings of bird assemblages? Register here.  

Thanks everyone! 

Steph 

Great talk! I thoroughly enjoyed it. Some  high schoolers have done small AI projects(s) and have interest in the wildlife.
What resources would you all suggest to further develop high schooler’s interest in AI?
 

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How do I scale up acoustic surveys with Audiomoths?

Tessa Rhinehart
Our fourth WILDLABS Tech Tutor is Tessa Rhinehart, who tackled the question: How do I scale up acoustic surveys with Audiomoths and automated processing? You can catch up on this tutorial on our Youtube channel and read...

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How do I perform automated recordings of bird assemblages?

Carlos Abrahams
Our third WILDLABS Tech Tutor is Carlos Abrahams, who tackled the question: How do I perform automated recordings of bird assemblages? You can catch up on this tutorial on our youtube channel and read through the...

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How do I train my first machine learning model?

Daniel Situnayake
Our first WILDLABS Tech Tutor is Daniel Situnayake, who tackled the question: How do I train my first machine learning model?  To join one of our upcoming tutorials, visit the Tech Tutors series page. 

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article

Innovator Interview: Hack the Poacher

Hack the Poacher
Conservation technology largely consists of two categories: tools to monitor and study wildlife and their habitats, and solutions to mitigate or prevent negative human impacts. The fight against poaching in particular...

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The Perfect Paw Print: Collecting Data with FIT

Ellie Warren
A couple months ago, we introduced you to the Footprint Identification Technique (FIT), a non-invasive way to build an identification algorithm from both wild and captive animals by photographing footprints. Today, we'...

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funding

Competition: 2020 Hackaday Prize

Conservation X Labs
The 2020 Hackaday Prize competition has begun! This year, Conservation X Labs has partnered with the Hackaday Prizes as one of four nonprofits seeking tech-based solutions to urgent challenges. Conservation X Labs'...

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