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

艾伦·图灵研究所(图灵)将与国家实验室合作，在全国范围内努力开发和推出人工智能和数字配对技术方面的新方法，以提高英国解决环境和可持续发展问题的有效性(E&S)。图灵已经确定了E&S的四个长期任务：1)实现生物多样性监测的自动化，以实现自然恢复；2)提供本地化的环境预测，以减轻气候变化的影响；3)优化基础设施，以实现自然资源的可持续利用；以及4)模范干预措施，以实现可持续城市和地区的净零世界。拟议的计划将汇集英国人工智能、环境、可持续发展和政策领域的不同领导人和专家，以完善这些任务，制定雄心勃勃的国家5年路线图，并进行变革性的环境研究和创新，以避免气候和生物多样性灾难。如此复杂的挑战需要结合先进的分析技能，与不同学科的环境科学家共同工作。在这里，人工智能和数据科学充当了统一这些不同团队的约束剂，而图灵则是全英国包容性活动的中心枢纽，利用其过去与合作伙伴开展的ASG种子研究活动。具体地说，这将涉及与国家实验室合作，以建立和扩大我们的集体理解，这将包括：英国南极调查中心(BAS)、英国生态与水文学中心(UK CEH)、环境、渔业和水产养殖科学中心(CEFA)、国家海洋学中心(NOC)、英国气象局和Rothamsted研究。这项工作分为以下工作流(WS)：Ws1：E&S与英国研究和从业者社区的任务范围-Ws1.1：深入的利益相关者绘图和参与开发，完善并启动E&S任务。-WS1.2：支持E&S交付的能力建设-WS1.3：培育一个全国性的研究和最佳实践社区-WS2：扩大图灵人工智能科学和政府计划中改变游戏规则的环境研究-WS2.1：连接全球和局部尺度的传感器数据的智能融合-WS2.2：受控环境农业的数字双胞胎-WS2.3：图像中的自动形状分析和跟踪-WS2.4：数字双胞胎的可复制环境管道-WS2.5：培育一个开放的国际环境数据科学社区WS3：建立物理信息数据驱动的国家天气预报能力

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