AI for marine biodiversity: start of the AI-Biodiv Challenge

Responding to the challenges of marine biodiversity using artificial intelligence (AI) are the objectives of the three teams selected to take part in the AI-Biodiv challenge, which aims to predict changes in biodiversity in the marine environment in the Mediterranean Sea and the Pacific Ocean and to develop reliable indicators.

Project goals

Following a call for projects launched in March 2021 and aimed at the AI and biodiversity scientific communities in order to pool their expertise, three projects led by multidisciplinary and international teams of researchers have been selected. They will have to meet three objectives:

optimise AI methods to improve marine biodiversity research,
design innovative predictive models and indicators,
develop hybrid AI methods to enhance our knowledge of marine environments.

These three project teams will take part in the kick-off of the Challenge on Wednesday 23 February 2022.

The three chosen projects

The AIME project (Artificial Intelligence for Marine Ecosystems), under agreement with Expertise France and led by a Franco-African consortium
The SMART-BIODIV project (Artificial Intelligence Technologies for Biodiversity Research) led by a French consortium
The FISH-PREDICT project (Predicting the biodiversity of reef fish) is led by a French consortium

>> For more information on these projects, see the press release (in French)

Organisation of the challenge

This challenge is organised by the French National Research Agency (ANR), co-financed by the French Development Agency (AFD) and led by an operational consortium piloted by LNE, including the Foundation for Research on Biodiversity (FRB) and the French National Museum of Natural History (MNHN) via the infrastructure of the National Biodiversity Data Centre (PNDB).