Are you familiar with the Rainforest Connection project? In short, it uses real-time acoustic signals to detect illegal activity in protected forests.
Rainforest Connection (RFCs)
is a non-profit association that recycles old mobile phones to help protect the
rainforest from illegal logging. How does it do it? Using artificial
intelligence to detect sounds that can be hazardous to the environment in
protected forest areas in rainforests. These illegal logging contributes to deforestation,
illegal and increases carbon emissions.
Illegal deforestation is a path to deforestation of tropical forests, one of the main causes of weather change. Bestowing to the UN, up to 90% of clearings in tropical forests are illegal.
One of the most interesting pieces of artificial intelligence this NGO uses is robotics and, of course, the socio-economic impact it will have, expressly given the broader ramifications of climate change and the long-term consequences of inaction. so. Stop this illegal deforestation that continues to threaten the fragile balance of a planet that never stops begging for help. And it's the immensity that makes the Amazon rainforest so diverse and fertile that also makes them extremely difficult to defend.
If you protect trees, you
protect everything else.
Formed in 2014, Rainforest The connection began at the time using used solar-powered phones as listening
stations that could alert powers that be to the sounds of illegal logging. Now
the machine learning application has extended the power of the web. Today's
phones are smarter, more modern, and a powerful and versatile tool that can be
used as a wireless sound detector.
Initially, mobile phones only
heard certain sounds that indicated, for example, the presence of a chainsaw,
but the introduction of an artificial intelligence variable into continuous
learning led to the fact that much more could be done from the audio stream.
They can now detect shots,
voices, views ... much finer detail than a sonic chainsaw. And the good news is
that AI has improved over the years.
The RFCs monitoring system
offers the ability to protect key areas of the rainforest and respond to
warnings in real-time, while exchanging massive amounts of ecosystem data that
helps negotiate greater protection in these areas. In some cases, protecting a
rainforest perimeter can mean protecting everything behind it.
What are the organization's
current programs?
The NGO is currently
participating in the Tembe Indigenous Peoples Reserve project in Brazil,
working with the Tembe indigenous people to protect their rainforests from
illegal logging, settlement and illegal incursions; in order to protect a key
piece of land that tembe successfully recaptured from destructive illegal
settlers. Rainforest Connection has also installed stations in Cameroon and
Sumatra, and many more will be on the way.