Environmental SustainabilityEnvironmental sustainability can be achieved with the strategic use of AI. 

The field of artificial intelligence (AI) is thriving thanks to large investments, and large companies with a large environmental footprint can use artificial intelligence to make their operations more environmentally sustainable. AI for environmental sustainability can help achieve such goals. AI is important not only for the environment but for achieving all other sustainable development goals, from eradicating hunger and poverty to achieving sustainable energy and gender equality, protecting environmental sustainability, and conserving biodiversity. 

Sustainable development as defined by the United Nations has a total of 17 goals, which can be divided into three pillars: environment, economy, and society. A study published in Nature Communications looked at how AI development could not only enable many advances but also hinder others.

The point is that AI offers unprecedented opportunities, but depending on the framework in which AI is deployed, it may not always lead to positive results. Example: In countries with little ethical oversight, transparency, and democratic policies, AI can enable nationalism, discrimination, and undemocratic election results. AI and sustainable development has a huge impact on humanity's future, so better regulatory agencies need to be in place to monitor environmental sustainability.

AI to address Environmental Challenges: Opportunities

AI helps protect the environment and save resources by helping reduce energy emissions, detect carbon removal, design more environmentally friendly transportation networks, monitor deforestation, and predict extreme weather events. It has the potential to accelerate global efforts. 

The following is an example of how AI can provide a means to address the most pressing environmental issues.

Climate Change

• Use artificial intelligence to optimize energy production and demand in real-time. A better grid system that uses renewable energy with improved predictability and efficiency helps in environmental sustainability.

• Smart sensors and meters can be deployed in buildings to collect data and monitor, analyze and optimize energy usage in buildings AI for environmental sustainability.

• AI is already being used in smart transport eg: Google Maps and Waze, Optimize navigation using artificial intelligence algorithms. It enhances safety and provides information on traffic flows and congestion (eg Nexar).

Biodiversity and Conservation

• Combined with satellite imagery, AI can detect changes in land use, vegetation, forest cover, and the aftermath of natural disasters. 

• Invasive species can be monitored, identified, tracked, and their presence identified, tracked, and eliminated using all of the above technologies, using AI for environmental sustainability and computer vision. A company called Blue River Technology uses AI to detect the presence of invasive species and other biodiversity changes. 

• Prediction software is used to help anti-poaching units plan patrol routes.

Ocean Health

• AI helps protect species and habitats by collecting data from hard-to-reach or impossible marine locations. Illegal fishing can also be tracked using AI for environmental sustainability. 

• You can use environmental sustainability AI-powered robots to monitor marine conditions such as pollution levels, temperature, and pH.

Water Issues

• AI for environmental sustainability is widely used by water scientists to predict water usage in specific areas and to create weather forecasts for making informed policy decisions.

• AI and sustainability can help predict the weather, soil, groundwater conditions, and drought.

Healthy Air 

• Air purifiers with environmental sustainability can collect real-time air quality and environmental data and adjust filter efficiency. 

• AI for environmental sustainability simulations can alert people living in urban areas about pollution levels in the area. There are tools that can quickly and accurately identify the source of pollution.

• AI uses data from vehicles, radar sensors, and cameras to help improve air pollution.

Weather forecast and Disaster resiliency

• AI for environmental sustainability predictive analytics, along with drones, advanced sensor platforms, and similar tools, can monitor earthquakes, floods, storms, sea-level changes, and other possible natural disasters. AI helps governments and affected agencies take timely action and uses automatic triggers to make such information available in real-time, facilitating early evacuation when needed.

• Various meteorological companies, technology companies such as IBM and Palantir, and insurers combine AI with traditional physics-based modeling techniques to model the impact of extreme weather on infrastructure and other systems, and disaster risk management strategies.