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GAIA-Sat-IoT – Guardian of the Wild using Artificial Intelligence Applications and Satellite-based IoT Networks

Environmental changes on our planet have reached historic proportions both in scale and speed. Owing to the massive decline in biodiversity and climate change, the natural balance has been severely disrupted. Digitalisation, however, is creating technologies and developments to proactively meet these challenges. In particular, the advancing miniaturisation of electronic sensor technology for the creation of large data sets (Big Data) and their analysis by means of artificial intelligence (AI) in quasi-real time are also opening up new solutions for nature conservation science in the monitoring of ecosystems, One Health and human-wildlife conflicts.

The project “GAIA-Sat-IoT: Guardian of the wild using Artificial Intelligence Applications and Satellite-based IoT Networks”, funded by the German Aerospace Center, is the pivotal research and development project of GAIA. Within this project, the team of the Fraunhofer IIS and Leibniz Institute is doing fundamental work in understanding the biology and ecology of sentinel species such as the white-backed vulture, monitoring animal movement through telemetry and analysing the large amounts of data through artificial intelligence, and designing and developing a generation of animal tags with sensor-based artificial intelligence (AI), a camera, energy-efficient electronics and satellite-based communication technology. The following specific goals will thus be implemented in the funding period from January 2022 to June 2024:


The GAIA-Sat-IoT project (joint project “Artificial Intelligence and IoT Technology with Satellite Communication in Species Protection and Wildlife Research”, sub-project “Development of camera tags with sensor-related AI for satellite IoT communication) is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action on the basis of a decision of the German Bundestag.

Consortium Partners: Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (Leibniz-IZW) & Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS

Duration: January 1, 2022 – June 30, 2024

Funding code: 50YB2201B

TEAM
Dr Ortwin Aschenborn
Wildlife veterinarian and project head at Leibniz-IZW
+4930 5168 462
Dr Jörg Melzheimer
Wildlife biologist and project head at Leibniz-IZW
+4930 5168 462
Wanja Rast
Wildlife biologist and AI specialist at Leibniz-IZW
+4930 5168 467
Jürgen Ernst
Technical project head at Fraunhofer IIS
Rubén Portas
Field scientist in Namibia at Leibniz-IZW
+4930 5168 327
Dr Subodh Ingaleshwar
Embedded AI specialist at Fraunhofer IIS
Jonas Mrazek
Technical Development IoT communication at Fraunhofer IIS
Dr Shrutika Sawant
AI software specialist at Fraunhofer IIS
Christof Schlund
Consultant System Engineering and Hardware Design at Fraunhofer IIS
Thi Uyen Ly Dang
Senior Scientist for Satellite IoT at Fraunhofer IIS
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