Filtering data types and onward rooting

Actility  LoRaWAN Things Park Network ServerThe network server connects sensors, gateways and end-user applications and ensures reliable and secure data routing all along the LoRaWAN network. Along with the Operation Support System (or OSS), they are the brain that controls the complete LoRaWAN network

 

  • Collects data from the LoRaWan Gateways and transports this data from field-based sensors onto Node Red, which sends data to Earth Ranger (a data visualisation software).
  • It can be self-managed through training. 
  • It is easy to replicable.
  • It can be deployed on-premise or on the cloud

Today, Actility’s IoT network server supports 131 LoRaWAN gateways with CCF and nearly a thousand sensors across 35 community-led and private conservancies. These networks span iconic landscapes like the Masai Mara, Tsavo and Northern Rangelands of Kenya, forming a digital safety net across nearly 10 million hectares.

Government agencies, including the Kenya Wildlife Service and Uganda Wildlife Authority, have endorsed the LoRaWan approach for expansion across national parks and community lands.

 

Building Cross sectoral Partnerships

Hack The Planet acknowledge that our partnerships allow us to combine strengths, resources, and expertise, amplifying the impact and fostering innovative solutions. Collaborating creates shared value and builds networks, enabling mutual growth and sustainability.

Local involment:
The scanners send real-time alerts to the anti-poaching control room. These alerts can also be shared with local communities or neighboring farms, enabling them to act as third-party partners in anti-poaching efforts. By involving locals directly in the response process, the system fosters collaboration, increases situational awareness, and empowers communities to take an active role in protecting wildlife.

Scanneredge is a collaboration with Tech for Conservation organisation Smartparks, Management of national parks like Gonarezhou - Zimbabwe, park technicians, rangers(QRU) and the local community. Through this cross-sector partnership, we have demonstrated that ScannerEdge is ready for broader deployment, increasing the number of active national parks and total scanners in use.

To establish a successful cross-sector partnership, it is essential to clearly define each partner's role and level of involvement from the outset. Ensuring local ownership of the solution is crucial for achieving long-term sustainability and impact.

Purpose: To align resources, expertise, and strategic goals across different sectors for effective implementation and operational success.

How it Works: Partnerships are built through workshops, shared missions, and transparent agreements outlining roles and responsibilities. Regular evaluations ensure partnerships remain productive.

Scanneredge offers a plug&play innovation offering a quick installation that can be monitor the area for signs of potential poachers immediately after installation. 

The true success depends on the internal Rangers Quick Response Unit's ability to act swiftly and effectively on the real-time data provided. The unit must remain on constant standby, equipped with reliable transportation, and prepared to respond on poaching activity.

Building trust among stakeholders takes time but is essential for long-term collaboration.

Cross-sectoral partnerships increase funding opportunities and knowledge sharing, enhancing the overall impact.

Quick Response Unit acting on suspicious threats based on real-time data

Leveraging real-time alerts from ScannerEdge, a response unit can quickly assess and mitigate potential threats, such as poaching or other illegal activities.

Purpose: To translate RF signal detection into actionable insights that trigger swift response actions in the field.

How it Works: Alerts are routed to dedicated response teams equipped to investigate and intervene. ScannerEdge’s GPS functionality and integration into EarthRanger aids in pinpointing signal sources for precise action.

Response protocols must be clearly defined to avoid delays in decision-making.

Collaboration with local enforcement agencies enhances the effectiveness of rapid response teams.

Real-time response is more effective when combined with predictive analytics based on historical ScannerEdge data.

Mobile/Satellite Phone Monitoring

ScannerEdge specializes in monitoring RF signals from mobile and satellite phones, as well as other communication devices, to detect human activity in remote areas.

Purpose: To provide real-time intelligence on human presence or illegal activities by detecting and analyzing RF signals within a 3 km radius.

How it Works: ScannerEdge scans for RF signals (UMTS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, satellite phones, and VHF radios) and transmits alerts via LoRaWAN or satellite connectivity. Data is centralized for further analysis and decision-making.

ScannerEdge’s ability to integrate with multiple communication networks LoRa/Satellite ensures reliable data transmission even very remote regions.

Satellite data transmission, while robust, can be cost-prohibitive and requires funding models that accommodate operational expenses.

Proper calibration to filter false positives is critical for actionable intelligence.

Technical Installation and Training

Ensuring that ScannerEdge devices are properly installed and configured in the field, with thorough training for operators to maximize their effectiveness in detecting illegal human activities.

Purpose: To equip field teams with the skills and knowledge to install, operate, and maintain ScannerEdge devices, ensuring continuous functionality in diverse environments.

How it Works: ScannerEdge is installed in strategic locations, configured via Bluetooth through a smartphone app, and calibrated to local RF conditions. Training includes understanding signal detection, troubleshooting, and device maintenance.

On-site, hands-on training yields better outcomes than theoretical sessions alone.

Operators need to understand both the technical and practical implications of the data collected.

Regular follow-ups improve long-term device functionality and user confidence.

Connecting the public

Connecting the public: This mini program aims to promote the mainstream of biodiversity conservation by desensitizing current monitoring data in the industry and designing low threshold interactions for the traditional data labeling process. This allows the public to participate in the training process of biodiversity models in a more accessible and intuitive way through the mini program. On the one hand, the public can enjoy and learn about the most authentic protection monitoring images through the form of "playing games"; On the other hand, the power of the public can be utilized to continuously train a universal model of biodiversity, achieving the goal of citizen science in the process.
Through product design, 'Wild Friends' breaks down the process of annotating and verifying institutional data into tool based tasks, reducing the initial training costs of institutions. With simple guidance, volunteers or the general public can complete basic annotation content.
The first step is to check for the presence of animals (manually identified or judged by AI);
Step two, estimate the number of animals (manually determined);
Step three, select animals (manually or through AI evaluation of selection accuracy);
Step four, identify the name of the animal (manually selected or judged by AI);
Step five, randomly allocate cross validation in the background. Ensure the accuracy and consistency of data.
 

AI Species Recognition

AI species recognition: This product uses AI recognition as the underlying technology, with endangered species as the core recognition object. It trains a large biodiversity recognition model that can support monitoring of mountains, rivers, forests, fields, lakes, grasses, and sands systems. The model is free and open to public welfare organizations dedicated to biodiversity conservation, such as research institutes, conservation organizations, and individuals. The reason why "wild friends" are so powerful is because they have a powerful "engine": YOLO World.
As the underlying universal model of 'wild friends', its primary characteristic is strong learning ability. It has powerful multimodal zero sample recognition and few sample recognition capabilities, which means it can quickly identify animal location regions and species information of multiple species through a small number of samples. For example, to recognize a new species, traditional models require thousands of photos and several days of training; YOLO World only requires a small number of photos and training iterations to achieve rapid adaptation.
Secondly, it has a high degree of tolerance. No longer limited to training and prediction of specific species, it has strong open vocabulary recognition ability and zero sample recognition ability, and can accurately identify and locate untrained species. For example, traditional models can only recognize trained species such as tigers and antelopes; The new model can also recognize snow leopards and foxes simultaneously - even if it has never trained these two animals before.
Another advantage of "wild friends" is that they spend less money. Common AI models heavily rely on high-performance acceleration cards, which result in high costs for both hardware environment and maintenance operations.

Connecting the public

Connecting the public: This mini program aims to promote the mainstream of biodiversity conservation by desensitizing current monitoring data in the industry and designing low threshold interactions for the traditional data labeling process. This allows the public to participate in the training process of biodiversity models in a more accessible and intuitive way through the mini program. On the one hand, the public can enjoy and learn about the most authentic protection monitoring images through the form of "playing games"; On the other hand, the power of the public can be utilized to continuously train a universal model of biodiversity, achieving the goal of citizen science in the process.
Through product design, 'Wild Friends' breaks down the process of annotating and verifying institutional data into tool based tasks, reducing the initial training costs of institutions. With simple guidance, volunteers or the general public can complete basic annotation content.
The first step is to check for the presence of animals (manually identified or judged by AI);
Step two, estimate the number of animals (manually determined);
Step three, select animals (manually or through AI evaluation of selection accuracy);
Step four, identify the name of the animal (manually selected or judged by AI);
Step five, randomly allocate cross validation in the background. Ensure the accuracy and consistency of data.
 

AI Species Recognition

AI species recognition: This product uses AI recognition as the underlying technology, with endangered species as the core recognition object. It trains a large biodiversity recognition model that can support monitoring of mountains, rivers, forests, fields, lakes, grasses, and sands systems. The model is free and open to public welfare organizations dedicated to biodiversity conservation, such as research institutes, conservation organizations, and individuals. The reason why "wild friends" are so powerful is because they have a powerful "engine": YOLO World.
As the underlying universal model of 'wild friends', its primary characteristic is strong learning ability. It has powerful multimodal zero sample recognition and few sample recognition capabilities, which means it can quickly identify animal location regions and species information of multiple species through a small number of samples. For example, to recognize a new species, traditional models require thousands of photos and several days of training; YOLO World only requires a small number of photos and training iterations to achieve rapid adaptation.
Secondly, it has a high degree of tolerance. No longer limited to training and prediction of specific species, it has strong open vocabulary recognition ability and zero sample recognition ability, and can accurately identify and locate untrained species. For example, traditional models can only recognize trained species such as tigers and antelopes; The new model can also recognize snow leopards and foxes simultaneously - even if it has never trained these two animals before.
Another advantage of "wild friends" is that they spend less money. Common AI models heavily rely on high-performance acceleration cards, which result in high costs for both hardware environment and maintenance operations.
 

To Foster that Wildlife Friendly Actions (i.e, guanaco use) could bring solutions on the conflict generated between conservation and livestock production paradigm.

Communication is vital for any company, business, or professional activity. It is useless to have a lot of knowledge and great abilities to generate a good product if we do not manage to make ourselves visible in an effective way, attracting consumers. For large companies (due to having a budget and specifically assigned), it is relatively easy to find the perfect insight and get to shape the campaign. SEO strategies, SEM, usability and UX issues, social media, implementation of channels such as email marketing or SMS, etc. A good campaign knows how to make room in all these areas. However, it is a mistake to think that only companies with large resources can gain a good digital presence or outside it. When we talk about "social communication" we must bear in mind that not everyone has access to each of the available digital platforms, nor are they present in all existing social networks. We consider a "successful" strategy if we manage to gain visibility using the most frequent communication channels available to capture interest and loyalty.

“create, measure, and learn” potential communication (comm) strategies on WFA. These workshops will explain basic guidelines on comm styles, impacts of different strategies, and the scale of those. Some campaigns will want to gain visibility, notoriety, generate engagement in social networks or simply cause a considerable impact to make the audience act. Training for comm actions to build and strengthen capacity within national stakeholders and local communities to expand on WFA.

The PayúnMatrú Cooperative members may be able in the future to teach the methods they learn during this project to other groups that wish to manage guanacos in Patagonia. Wildlife Friendly Actions to obtain guanaco fiber become a standard procedure by guanaco-fiber producers all around the Patagonian Steppe.

The communication efforts applied so far, through small notes on science pages, television, and radio channels to disseminate our project paid off. Since one of them reached the managers of Good Growth, the international company that connects science, customers with the world´s most successful Brands. With the help of WCS that is a representative of the  WFEN and as such, acting as a link between both companies to sign a contract, which states two important points: a)the parties understand that the costs of a well-conducted management operation imply that the base price of guanaco raw fiber should be 200$; b)the purchase of 100 kilos from the Payun Matru Cooperative.