Capitalising on the Big Data era: establishing a multi-source monitoring framework for England's natural capital assets and flows

对已批准《生物多样性公约》并致力于实现联合国2030年可持续发展目标的国家来说，可持续利用和管理地球自然资源是一个关键目标。它也越来越被认为是可持续商业实践的关键。因此，政府和私营部门需要了解目前地球上存在哪些自然元素；它们给人们带来了什么好处；以及它们是如何受到人类活动和当前全球环境变化危机的影响的。这方面的知识对于制定和执行有效的环境政策和缓解战略并最终支持可持续发展至关重要。从卫星遥感到相机陷阱和业余博物学家的观察，最近的技术进步彻底改变了我们监测生物多样性的能力，现在为生物学家提供了许多新信息。此外，开源平台和自动化数据处理的发展使得在相对较短的时间框架内分析大量数据成为可能。在过去十年中，关于自然价值评估的理论工作也取得了迅速进展，这导致了企业和政策制定者广泛采用自然资本方法。这些事态发展使每年向国家机构评估和报告自然资本资产和流动成为可能，前提是能够有效地汇集和综合现有的各种信息来源。然而，到目前为止，这个想法还没有在大的空间尺度上得到验证。为了填补这一知识空白，本项目旨在展示如何有效地将大型和多样化的生物多样性数据集结合起来，定期评估自然资本资产和流动的分布和质量。该项目将以英格兰为重点，利用现有的前所未有的生物多样性数据。在测试与推动资产和流量变化的因素以及各种方法的成本效益有关的若干假设的同时，这项工作将开发一系列数据流和流程，说明如何开发自动化流程以有效地支持国家范围内的评估工作和决策。

Sustainable use and management of the Earth's natural resources is a key target for nations that have ratified the Convention on Biological Diversity and aim to meet the United Nations 2030 sustainable development goals. It is also increasingly recognised as critical for sustainable business practices. Governments and the private sector therefore need to understand what elements of nature are currently present on the planet; what benefits they provide for people; and how they are being affected by human activity and the current global environmental change crisis. This knowledge is vital to generate and implement effective environmental policies and mitigation strategies, and ultimately support sustainable development. From satellite remote sensing to camera traps and observations crowd-sourced from amateur naturalists, recent technological advances have revolutionised our ability to monitor biodiversity and are now providing biologists with a lot of new information. In addition, developments in open source platforms and automated data processes are allowing vast amount of data to be analysed in relatively short time frames. Theoretical work on the valuation of nature has also progressed rapidly over the past decade, which has led to a broad adoption of the natural capital approach by businesses and policy makers. These developments make it possible to assess and report on natural capital assets and flows on an annual basis to national bodies, providing that the various source of information available can be brought together and synthetized efficiently. So far, however, this idea hasn't been tested at large spatial scales. To fill this gap in knowledge, this project aims to demonstrate how large and diverse biodiversity datasets could be effectively combined to regularly assess the distribution and quality of natural capital assets and flows. The project will focus on England, taking advantage of the unprecedented biodiversity data that is available. While testing a number of hypotheses relating to the factors driving changes in assets and flows and the cost-effectiveness of various approaches, the work will develop a series of data flows and processes that will illustrate how automated processes can be developed to efficiently support evaluation exercises and decision making at national scales.