Mapping greener futures with planetary computing with Prof Anil Madhavapeddy

The world is a really crowded place these days; we are trying to balance the food, fuel and fibre needs of a growing human population with the need to spare land for natural wildlife that are facing an extinction crisis. In this talk, I'll discuss our ongoing work on building comprehensive maps of the world that measure important aspects of nature by leverage satellite sensing and computation pipelines. These models can measure things like tropical forest carbon, but also be composed to build the first globally comparable measure of biodiversity (through a species persistence approach), and also help measure the country-level impacts of human food choices to natural biodiversity. I'll discuss some of the implications of this global monitoring approach: is this an opportunity to equalise the data landscape to the global south, or will it just reinforce existing data inequality? I hope it'll be the former, and I'd like to get more ideas from you all on how to avoid the latter!

Accessibility

An access guide to Birkbeck Room B34 can be found on AccessAble.

About the speaker

Anil Madhavapeddy is the Professor of Planetary Computing at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory. He co-leads the Energy and Environment Group at Cambridge, and also co-directs the Centre for Earth Observation and the Cambridge Centre for Carbon Credits (4C), which aims to increase the integrity of natural climate solutions that contribute towards ending deforestation and improving biodiversity globally, via the application of modern remote sensing and statistical techniques to reduce the overheads of verifying interventions. He has decades of experience with constructing Internet-scale systems, and has contributed to open-source projects such as OCaml, Docker, Xen, and OpenBSD, with users ranging from all the major cloud computing providers to governments worldwide.

About this event series

Dreams, Desires and Aspirations: Imaginative Landscapes of Prosperity

At UCL Institute for Global Prosperity we are working towards a new model of prosperity for the 21st century, reworking the way we conceive and run our economies, our societies, and our relationship with the planet. Our social and collective imaginaries, dreams, and aspirations are at the core of that mission, not only in understanding how people strive towards ideas of prosperity, but in unearthing how and why different ideas are constructed as they are. This term, we are inviting scholars, novelists, politicians, artists, and film-makers to help us excavate some of the imaginary forces that brought ‘prosperity’ to where it is today, and where it might be taken tomorrow.

Soundbites are a platform for professionals and entrepreneurs who are leading in their field. Speakers are innovators and inspiring actors working in new and traditional sectors, outside of academia. The Soundbite gives the audience an insight into how their organisation contributes to sustainable and inclusive prosperity.

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