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

地球自然资源的可持续利用和管理是已批准《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的一个关键目标。它也越来越被认为是可持续商业实践的关键。因此，各国政府和私营部门需要了解地球上目前存在哪些自然要素;它们为人类带来了哪些惠益;以及人类活动和当前全球环境变化危机对人类的影响。这些知识对于制定和实施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，最近的技术进步已经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，开放源代码平台和自动化数据处理的发展使得能够在相对较短的时间内分析大量数据。在过去十年中，关于自然估值的理论工作也取得了迅速进展，这导致企业和政策制定者广泛采用自然资本方法。这些发展使得有可能每年对自然资本资产和流动进行评估并向国家机构报告，条件是可以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，该项目旨在展示如何有效地结合大型和多样化的生物多样性数据集，以定期评估自然资本资产和流动的分布和质量。该项目将重点放在英格兰，利用前所未有的生物多样性数据。这项工作将测试与资产和流动变化的驱动因素以及各种方法的成本效益有关的若干假设，同时将开发一系列数据流和程序，说明如何开发自动化程序，以有效支持国家一级的评价工作和决策。

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.