Abstract
Smart monitoring for conservation areas
WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature) monitors over 250,000 protected areas (e.g. national parks and nature reserves) and thousands of other sites and critical habitats. These sites are the foundation of global natural assets and are central to the preservation of biodiversity and human well-being. Unfortunately, they face increasing pressures from human development.
In this challenge, we explore various data science techniques to automatically detect news articles that report emerging threats to key protected areas. We describe a system that identifies such news stories near real-time. This is vital to enable the wider machinery of WWF and the conservation community to engage with governments, companies, shareholders, insurers, and others to help halt the degradation or destruction of key habitats.
Citation information
Data Study Group team. (2020, June 5). Data Study Group Final Report: WWF. Zenodo. http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3878457
Additional information
David J. Patterson, WWF
Laura Garcia-Velez, WWF
Leonardo Castro-Gonzalez, University of Birmingham
Lucas Deecke, University of Edinburgh
Dan Saattrup Nielsen, University of Bristol
Selina Cho, University of Oxford
Lesley Dwyer, City, University of London
Victoria Auyeung, University of Cambridge
Amy Krause, EPCC, University of Edinburgh
Alejandro Coca-Castro, King’s College London
Reka Vonnak, University of Glasgow
Anton Baleato Lizancos, University of Cambridge
Alina Miron, Brunel University London
A. Barbara Metzler, Imperial College London
Katriona Goldmann, Queen Mary University London