Artificial Intelligence

How artificial intelligence can help tackle climate change and environmental issues globally?

Artificial Intelligence technology has already proved its ability to solving various problems, from business operations to personal lives. Now it could be one of the solutions to solve major global environmental crises, such as climate change, animal endangerment, disease containment, and much more. Even, some projects in each of these areas are already underway.

Many business decision-makers working in environmental sustainability are very optimistic about the power of AI. According to a report from Intel revealed that 74% of the 200 professionals in this field agreed that artificial intelligence will assist in solving long-standing environmental challenges.

Recently, experts at 2019 Artelligence - The Artificial Intelligence Forum, also expressed that AI and IoT (Internet of Things) will help to solve several pressing environmental issues around the world. Member of the AI Expert Group at the European Commission, Andrea Renda emphasized that countries need to create a framework for trustworthy AI, which will be critical in helping to resolve key environmental issues such as climate change, agricultural yields, and deteriorating ocean health.

According to him, the applications that are needed to fix environmental and societal issues around the world will come from AI and IoT. He says, "Already we are working on several cases where we are using AI to monitor agriculture to ensure that we are not using harmful pesticides and the right amount of fertiliser. We are also working on cases where we monitor the health of our oceans by looking at their salinity and temperature levels. The key element in all of these cases is sensors and partnerships with institutions such as universities that specialise in these fields."

Climate change is the biggest challenge facing the planet today. Seeing a chance to help this crisis, AI- and ML-driven companies taking their step forward. In this context, a recently published paper titled “Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning,” provides 13 areas where machine learning can be applied, including energy production, CO2 removal, education, solar geoengineering, and finance. With implementing in these fields, the possibilities are more energy-efficient buildings, creating new low-carbon materials, better monitoring of deforestation, and greener transportation. 

AI Applications for Environmental Issues

Leveraging artificial intelligence applications in environmental work offers huge advantages as the technology has the potential to process large amounts of data very quickly, and draw conclusions from that information that humans may not perform. The technology has already been implemented to several environmental problems, such as climate change, animal endangerment, energy efficiency, among others.

WildTrack, for instance, utilizes a computer vision solution, named Footprint Identification Technique, which monitors endangered species non-invasively. In general, the tool analyses images of footprints of endangered species like rhinos, cheetah, among others to identify them, track them, and determine what threatens them.

Furthermore, search engine Google has also used its own AI expertise to enhance its energy efficiency, leveraging DeepMind's machine learning capabilities. By doing so, the company reduced the amount of energy needed to cool its data centers by 40%.

So, artificial intelligence techniques are now leveraged to monitor endangered species, track diseases, and optimize crops. The technology has the ability to solve and provide a number of benefits for the environment and other sectors. But there is much more work to be done and it will be interesting to see how AI technology will solve today’s environmental issues.