China Nature Watch: using technology for Biodiversity Information Collection and Application to facilitate biodiversity-friendly decision making

Shan Shui Conservation Center
Publié: 25 avril 2022
Dernière modification: 19 octobre 2022
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Résumé

Biodiversity baseline data is key to conservation decision-making and practices, yet facing data deficiency and information asymmetry. With the assistance of technology tools, China Nature Watch aims at strengthening the collection of biodiversity data from various sources, especially citizen science, facilitating data applications in land use planning and public participation, and mainstreaming biodiversity conservation. 

 

Specifically, technology brings effective solutions to 3 modules:

  • Camera trap data management: developing online AI-incorporated data management system to simplify and speed up camera trap data collection and processing.
  • Citizen science data visualization: using PowerBI to automatically analyze and interactively visualize species records collected by citizen scientists.
  • Biodiversity Impact Assessment Tool (BiA): integrating ecological and construction data from multiple data sources to provide instant enquiry of biodiversity impact assessment for construction projects via cloud platform.

Classifications

Région
Asie de l'Est
Ampleur de la mise en œuvre
Intranational
Local
National
Ecosystème
Espaces verts (parcs, jardins, forêt urbaine)
Forêt de feuillus tempéré
Marais salant
Piscine, lac, étang
Plage
Rivière, ruisseau
Toundra, prairie montane
Zone humide urbain
Zones humide (marécage, marais, tourbière)
Écosystème urbain
Écosystèmes d'eau douce
Écosystèmes forestiers
Écosystèmes marins et côtiers
Écosystémes des prairies
Thème
Accès et partage des avantages
Acteurs locaux
Gestion des espèces
Gestion des terres
Gestion et Planification des Aires protégées et conservées
Gouvernance des Aires protégées et conservées
Indigènes
L'intégration de la biodiversité
Science et recherche
Sensibilisation et communications
Conservation des espèces et interventions axées sur l’approche « Une seule santé »
Évaluation du statut de l'espèce
Surveillance des espèces et recherche
Planification de la conservation des espèces
Communication des risques, engagement communautaire et changement de comportement
Évaluation des risques
Défis
Utilisations conflictuelles / impacts cumulatifs
Manque de sensibilisation du public et des décideurs
Mauvaise gouvernance et participation
Objectifs de développement durable
ODD 11 - Villes et communautés durables
ODD 15 - Vie terrestre
Objectifs d’Aichi
Objectif 1: Sensibilisation accrue de la biodiversité
Objectif 2: Valeurs de la biodiversité intégrées
Objectif 11: Aires protégées et conservées
Objectif 12: Réduction du risque d'extinction
Objectif 17: Stratégies de la biodiversité et des plans d'action
Objectif 19: Partage de l'information et de la connaissance
Approches pour l’engagement des entreprises
Engagement direct avec une entreprise

Emplacement

People's Republic of China

Défis

Each process in biodiversity data workflow from collection, processing, visualization, to application is cumbersome and tedious that requires a lot of repetitive labor and is in urgent need of simplification and automatization.

  • Camera trap data management: community-based camera trap monitoring faces bottlenecks of low efficiency (e.g., data collection from local community monitors, manual species identification) and unstable and relatively low data quality (e.g., incorrect and missing data, high rates of blank photos).
  • Citizen science data visualization: visualization products are static and campaign-specific, created manually at several stages of each campaign, which cost much conservationists’ effort while only provide delayed feedbacks to citizen scientists.  
  • Biodiversity impact assessment: data deficiency and lack of public access to data have limited data usage scenarios. Also, biodiversity impact assessment is manually conducted for each enquiry, with reports manually composed.

Bénéficiaires

 

  • Conservationists: enhanced efficiency
  • Local communities: enhanced efficiency and timely feedback
  • Citizen scientists: timely feedback
  • Government agencies, academic institution, public: easy access to biodiversity data

 

Comment les blocs constitutifs interagissent-ils entre eux dans la solution?

The overall planning and development of supportive partnership have provided concrete foundation for the project.

Camera trap data is an integral species distribution data source for the Nature Watch database. The camera trap data management system speeds up the overall workflow and enhances the timely input of camera trap data into the database. Similar for citizen scientist data, as another species record source, the visualization platform helps inspire citizen scientists’ enthusiasm and boost species observations. Both building blocks accumulate data for the BiA tool, promoting more accurate assessment.

Moreover, the visualization platform and the BiA tool involve public communication targeted at different audience, complementing each other for the ultimate goal of biodiversity mainstreaming.

Impacts

Technology solutions have optimized biodiversity data workflow and promoted data applications:

  • Camera trap data management: The community-based camera trap monitoring assistant app has made data recording easier for 86 local community monitors in charge of camera trap setup/pickup in field. AI image recognition models have processed over 380,000 camera trap images, substituting more than 100 hours of labor. Such acceleration in data collection and processing enables timely feedback to stakeholders and supports conservation decision-making.
  • Citizen science data visualization: Through visualizing 2688 records of 22 species collected during six campaigns in 2016-2021 and automatically updating newly collected records, the platform has provided spatial, temporal, and interactive feedbacks to citizen scientist participants and significantly boosted interests in nature watch activities.   
  • BiA tool: The Nature Watch database maintains biodiversity baseline data collected from multiple data sources including species records (2591 species, 1.35 million records) and protected areas (6 national parks, 474 national protected areas, etc.). Up till now, the BiA tool has provided interactive and visualized biodiversity impact assessment enquiry services to more than 1260 construction project planners and other stakeholders, facilitating biodiversity-friendly decision making.

Contribué par

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Chunyue Wei Shan Shui Conservation Center

Autres contributeurs

Shan Shui Conservation Center
Shan Shui Conservation Center
Shan Shui Conservation Center
Shan Shui Conservation Center
Shan Shui Conservation Center
Peking University Center for Nature and Society
Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University
Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University
Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.
Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.