A national UK programme in AI and digital twins to address the biodiversity and climate crisis

阿兰·图灵研究所（图灵）将与国家实验室合作，领导一项全国性的努力，开发和推出人工智能和数字孪生技术的新方法，以提高英国在解决环境和可持续性问题方面的效率。图灵已经确定了四个长期的环境与科学任务：1)自动化生物多样性监测，使自然恢复；2)提供本地环境预测，以减轻气候变化的影响；3)优化基础设施，实现自然资源的可持续利用；4)示范干预措施，以实现可持续的城市和区域，实现净零世界。拟议的项目将汇集英国在人工智能、环境、可持续性和政策方面的不同群体的领导人和专家，以完善这些任务，制定雄心勃勃的国家5年路线图，并开展变革性环境研究和创新，以避免气候和生物多样性灾难。这种复杂的挑战需要先进的分析技能，并与各个分支学科的环境科学家一起工作。在这里，人工智能和数据科学作为结合剂，将这些不同的团队团结在一起，图灵作为英国范围内包容性活动的中心枢纽，利用其过去与合作伙伴的ASG种子研究活动。具体来说，这将涉及与国家实验室的合作，以建立和增强我们的集体理解，其中包括：英国南极调查局（BAS）、英国生态与水文中心（UK CEH）、环境、渔业和水产养殖科学中心（Cefas）、国家海洋学中心（NOC）、英国气象局和洛安斯特研究所。工作分为以下工作流程（WS）：WS1：与英国研究和从业者社区的E&S任务范围界定—WS1.1：深入的利益相关者映射和参与，以开发、完善和启动E&S任务。WS1.2：支持E&S交付的能力建设- WS1.3：培育国家研究和最佳实践社区- ws2：从图灵的科学和政府人工智能计划中扩大改变游戏规则的环境研究- WS2.1：连接全球和地方尺度的传感器数据的智能融合- WS2.2：可控环境农业的数字孪生- WS2.3：图像内的自动形状分析和跟踪- WS2.4：数字孪生的可复制环境管道- WS2.5：建立一个开放的国际环境数据科学社区ws3：在天气预报方面建立由物理数据驱动的国家能力

The Alan Turing Institute (Turing), in collaboration with national labs, will lead a nationwide effort to develop and launch novel methods in AI and digital twinning technologies that improve the UK's effectiveness in addressing environment and sustainability (E&S) concerns. Turing has identified four long-term E&S missions: 1) automate biodiversity monitoring to enable nature recovery; 2) deliver localised environmental predictions to mitigate the impacts of climate change; 3) optimise infrastructure for sustainable use of natural resources; and 4) model interventions to achieve sustainable cities and regions for a net zero world. The proposed programme will bring together a diverse group of UK leaders and experts in AI, environment, sustainability and policy to refine these missions, develop an ambitious national 5-year roadmap and undertake transformative environmental research and innovation to avert climate and biodiversity catastrophe. Such complex challenges necessitate a blend of advanced analytical skills working in conjunction with environmental scientists across various sub-disciplines. Here, AI and data science act as the binding agent that unifies these diverse teams, and Turing serves as the central hub for UK-wide inclusive activities, leveraging its past ASG seeded research activities with partners. Specifically, this will involve collaboration with national laboratories to establish and augment our collective understanding, which will include: British Antarctic Survey (BAS), UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UK CEH), Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Cefas), National Oceanography Centre (NOC), UK Met Office, and Rothamsted Research. The work is separated into the following workstreams (WS):WS1: E&S Mission Scoping with UK research and practitioner communities- WS1.1: Deep stakeholder mapping and engagement to develop, refine and launch the E&S Missions.- WS1.2: Capacity-building to support E&S delivery - WS1.3: Nurturing a national community of research and best practiceWS2: Scaling-up game-changing environmental research from the Turing's AI for Science and Government programme- WS2.1: Intelligent fusion of sensor data bridging global and local scales- WS2.2: Digital Twins of Controlled Environment Agriculture- WS2.3: Automated shape analysis and tracking within imagery- WS2.4: Reproducible environmental pipelines for digital twins- WS2.5: Foster an open international environmental data science communityWS3: Establishing physics informed data-driven national capability in weather prediction