A Tale of Two Cities: Reflections on AI, Digital Technology and the Natural Environment

Contemporary digital technologies can make a profound impact on our understanding of the natural environment in moving toward sustainable futures. Examples of such technologies included sources of new data (e.g., an environmental Internet of Things), the ability to storage and process the large datasets that will result from this (e.g., through cloud computing), and the potential of data science and AI to make sense of these data alongside human experts. However, these same trends pose a threat to sustainable futures through, for example, the carbon footprint of digital technology and the risks of this escalating through the very trends mentioned above. This talk will explore this ‘tale of two cities’, reflecting on my experiences of my work at UKCEH where I explore the role of digital innovation in supporting contemporary environmental science, whilst also being aware of the potential negative impact of such technologies on the very environment we are seeking to understand and steer towards more sustainable futures. The talk will conclude with thoughts on how these two perspectives can be reconciled.

Biography

Prof. Gordon Blair is Head of Environmental Digital Strategy at UKCEH. He is also a Distinguished Professor of Distributed Systems at Lancaster University, where he now works part-time. He is Co-Director of the Centre of Excellence in Environmental Data Science (CEEDS), a joint initiative between UKCEH and Lancaster University and before joining UKCEH, held a prestigious EPSRC Senior Fellowship in Digital Technology and Living with Environmental Change (DT/LWEC). His current research interests focus on the role of digital technology in supporting environmental science. This encompasses new forms of environmental monitoring and data acquisition, including the role of Internet of Things technology; new forms of computational infrastructure to support the storage and processing of such data, specifically using cloud computing; and, new forms of analysing and making sense of this data using data science and AI. He is particularly interested in the future of Digital Research Infrastructure and how such infrastructure can support a new kind of science that is more open, collaborative, and integrative.