2024-10-10 18:54:00
VIENNA, Oct. 10, 2024 /PRNewswire/ – Huawei hosted the Innovations for Biodiversity Forum this week to celebrate the fifth anniversary of Huawei’s TECH4ALL digital inclusion initiative and provide insights into how technology is revolutionizing biodiversity conservation.
Launched in 2019 and aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the TECH4ALL program uses technology and partnerships to create positive impact in four areas: environment, education, health and development. In the environmental sector, Huawei TECH4ALL has implemented conservation projects with global and local partners in 53 protected areas in forests, wetlands and marine ecosystems around the world.
“Over the past five years, Huawei’s TECH4ALL program has demonstrated how technology can be a powerful force for good by addressing global challenges in environmental protection, education and digital inclusion,” said Harvey Zhang, CEO of Huawei Austria .
The Innovations for Biodiversity Forum focused on TECH4ALL conservation projects in Europe, including biodiversity monitoring results in the wetland ecosystem around Austria’s Lake Neusiedl.
The quality of reed habitats in this ecosystem is decreasing, negatively impacting amphibian species, mammals and birds. As of 2021, the audio surveillance devices have more than 2 million individual audio files collected from 69 bird species.
This comprehensive data set will help develop a management plan for ecosystem conservation, including the controlled fire management to rejuvenate aging reed stands and to strengthen overall biodiversity by understanding the habitat preferences of the individual species studied.
“In recent decades, reed has hardly been harvested, which has had a negative impact on the condition of the reed belt. The study examined whether targeted fires could have a similar effect to deforestation. To do this, areas were compared that had different ages due to fires,” says Dr. Christian Schulze from the Department of Biodiversity Research at the University of Vienna. “Research has shown that older reed areas are home to the greatest variety of bird species. The analysis of the individual species shows but also that controlled reed fires have positive aspects.”
The Forum examined a similar TECH4ALL monitoring project in Poland to obtain a more complete picture of biodiversity in the Bial̸owieża National Park ecosystem, also with the aim of developing targeted conservation measures.
Greek startup PROBOTEK has unveiled a wildfire prevention solution that uses sensors, drones, AI and 5G to detect and transmit real-time video images of fire hazards looming in parts of Europe due to climate change and rising temperatures gain weight. The project is designed to make it possible to respond in the first “golden 15 minutes” after a forest fire is discovered, inform residents about evacuation routes and plan routes for fire and rescue vehicles.
The forum also covered the success of an AI-based filtering system designed to protect Norway’s wild Atlantic salmon from possible extinction at the hands of invasive pink salmon. The pilot project in 2023 successfully filtered out 6,000 invasive salmon and expectations are high that the solution, the first of its kind in the world, can be expanded to all Norwegian river systems.
On the second day of the forum, the media delegation in attendance visited Lake Neusiedl to learn how the TECH4ALL solution works in practice and what transformative impact intelligent digital technologies can have on nature conservation.
Information about Huawei TECH4ALL
TECH4ALL is Huawei’s long-term digital inclusion initiative. With the help of innovative technologies and partnerships, TECH4ALL aims to promote inclusion and sustainability in the digital world.
For more information, please visit the Huawei TECH4ALL website:
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