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

Turing has identified four long-term E&S missions: to automate biodiversity monitoring to enable nature recovery; deliver localised environmental predictions to mitigate the impacts of climate change; optimise infrastructure for sustainable use of natural resources; and 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 and develop a national five-year roadmap.

Turing said that the programme aims to undertake ‘transformative’ environmental research and innovation to avert ‘climate and biodiversity catastrophe’.

The institute has received a grant of £5m from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to develop the national programme, and will act as the central hub for UK-wide research activities.

Dr Scott Hosking, senior research fellow, The Alan Turing Institute and British Antarctic Survey, said: “To reverse the biodiversity and climate crisis, it is paramount that we develop and deploy scalable solutions as swiftly as possible.