Artificial Intelligence Lab
The BAS AI Lab is a cross-disciplinary group of scientists and engineers leading in the development of AI and digital twin technologies to tackle our greatest polar research challenges.
These methods are now embedded across many areas of BAS science and engineering, including: oceanography; climate science and weather extremes; glacial change and water security; space weather monitoring; monitoring and tracking icebergs and wildlife from satellites; and automation for decarbonisation.
The Lab has two overarching objectives:
- the development of machine learning and data pipelines for understanding and predicting environmental change
- developing AI algorithms and digital infrastructure for optimising the use of our polar research vessels, our fleet of underwater and aerial vehicles, and Antarctic research bases
The BAS AI Lab leads mulitiple research programmes include some under The Alan Turing Institute’s AI for Science and Government research programme.
PhD opportunities
- Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in the Application of Artificial Intelligence to the study of Environmental Risks, University of Cambridge and British Antarctic Survey
IceNet
IceNet is a probabilistic, deep learning sea ice forecasting system developed by an international team and led by British Antarctic Survey and The Alan Turing Institute [Andersson et al., 2021]. …
AI for carbon reduction in ship navigation
AI systems will provide automated decision support to SDA masters in delivering optimal fuel economy and minimising carbon emissions.
AI4EOAccelerator
The AI4EO Accelerator is a collaboration between Φ-Lab of the European Space Agency (ESA) and the UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in the Application of Artificial Intelligence to the …
Wildlife from Space
Many populations of wildlife are remote, inaccessible or difficult to monitor. The advent of sub-metre, Very-High-Resolution (VHR) satellite imagery may enable us study these animals in a much more efficient …
AI tool to revolutionise polar ship navigation
15 November, 2022
Artificial Intelligence (AI) will enable ships navigating in polar ocean conditions to be more efficient using a new route planning tool created by British Antarctic Survey (BAS) researchers. The tool …
Space technology and artificial intelligence to monitor whale mass stranding events
18 November, 2021
An international team of scientists led by British Antarctic Survey have published research today on using new technology to study mass stranding of whales from space and how the technology …
Artificial intelligence to help predict Arctic sea ice loss
26 August, 2021
A new AI (artificial intelligence) tool is set to enable scientists to more accurately forecast Arctic sea ice conditions months into the future. The improved predictions could underpin new early-warning …
Using AI to track whales from space
4 February, 2021
British Antarctic Survey (BAS) scientists will work with an Artificial Intelligence company after being awarded a contract from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) to support the protection of an endangered …
PhD centre will nurture new leaders in Earth observation
9 January, 2020
A new centre will enable 50 fully-funded PhD researchers to harness satellite data to tackle global environmental challenges. The Centre for Satellite Data in Environmental Science (SENSE) will bring together expertise in …
Using AI to help tackle global environmental challenges
26 February, 2019
A new Centre for Doctoral Training, involving researchers from British Antarctic Survey, will develop Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques to address critical environmental challenges. Climate change and environmental hazards pose some …
Watching whales from space
1 November, 2018
Scientists have used detailed high-resolution satellite images provided by Maxar Technologies’ DigitalGlobe, to detect, count and describe four different species of whales. Reported this week in the journal Marine Mammal …
Seeing double: Digital twins and net zero
5 July, 2022 by Jonathan Smith
Reaching net zero, as a country or a business, requires new measures, technology and innovations. Digital twins are an example of this; they can be a powerful tool to drive innovation and efficiency.
BLOG: Predicting September 2021 Arctic sea ice using artificial intelligence
24 September, 2021 by Tom Andersson
Tom Andersson, a data scientist at British Antarctic Survey Artificial Intelligence (AI) Lab, shares the latest predictions from a new Arctic sea ice forecasting AI tool as this year’s Arctic …
Innovative Research Sprints Tackle Challenges in Biodiversity and Exposure
11 May, 2021 by Anita Faul
Over the last decade, digital technologies, including Artificial Intelligence, developed rapidly as did our capability to monitor our home planet from space with Earth Observation satellites. How can we most …
Earth Day 2020: A new age of Arctic science discovery – the AI way
24 April, 2020 by Scott Hosking
When we see news reports on climate change on our TV, they are often accompanied by footage of a polar bear walking over the icy Arctic landscape. But the Arctic …
Official launch of the BAS AI Lab!
4 December, 2019 by Risa Ueno
Today we officially launched the BAS AI Lab – thank you everyone for coming!
AI Lab presents at the First Artificial Intelligence for Copernicus Workshop
22 November, 2019 by Anita Faul
Andrew Fleming and Anita Faul present their research at the First Artificial Intelligence for Copernicus Workshop
AI for Environmental Sciences
21 July, 2019 by Rachel Furner
Rachel Furner is a PhD student at British Antarctic Survey, which has recently opened up its new AI Lab, that aims to foster the application of various machine learning (and …
Data Study Group: Automated monitoring of seals via high-resolution satellite imagery
8 April, 2019 by Premdeep Gill
Prem hosted at Data Study Group at the Alan Turing Institute Seals from space: automated Antarctic ecosystem monitoring via high-resolution satellite imagery Antarctic seal populations are potential indicators for the …
Automated clustering of storm tracks for interpreting ice core records
22 August, 2017 by Scott Hosking
Accumulation in coastal West Antarctic ice core records and the role of cyclone activity Cyclones are an important component of Antarctic climate variability, yet quantifying their impact on the polar …
Annotating very high-resolution satellite imagery: A whale case study
30 January, 2023 by Hannah Cubaynes, Penny Clarke, Peter Fretwell
The use of very high-resolution (VHR) optical satellites is gaining momentum in the field of wildlife monitoring, particularly for whales, as this technology is showing potential for monitoring the less…Read more on Annotating very high-resolution satellite imagery: A whale case study
Species-specific and seasonal differences in the resistance of salt-marsh vegetation to wave impact
14 December, 2022 by Ben Evans
The coastal protection function provided by the vegetation of tidal wetlands (e.g. salt marshes) will play an important role in defending coastlines against storm surges in the future and depend…Drainage and refill of an Antarctic Peninsula subglacial lake reveal an active subglacial hydrological network
30 November, 2022 by Dominic Hodgson, Peter Fretwell, Tom Jordan, Teal Riley
The presence of subglacial lakes and subglacial hydrological networks under the East and West Antarctic ice sheets is now relatively well understood, whilst their influence on ice dynamics is the…Antarctic Bedmap data: FAIR sharing of 60 years of ice bed, surface and thickness data [in review]
22 November, 2022 by Alice Fremand, Andy Smith, David Vaughan, Ed King, Elena Field, Fausto Ferraccioli, Hugh Corr, Hamish Pritchard, Peter Fretwell, Richard Hindmarsh, Tom Jordan, Richard Hindmarsh
Over the past 60 years, scientists have strived to understand the past, present and future of the Antarctic Ice Sheet. One of the key components of this research has been…A sensitivity analysis of a regression model of ocean temperature
30 August, 2022 by Dave Munday, Dan(i) Jones, Rachel Furner
There has been much recent interest in developing data-driven models for weather and climate predictions. However, there are open questions regarding their generalizability and robustness, highlighting a need to better…Read more on A sensitivity analysis of a regression model of ocean temperature
Efficient Temporal Piecewise-Linear Numeric Planning with Lazy Consistency Checking
1 August, 2022 by Maria Fox
Temporal planning often involves numeric effects that are directly proportional to their action’s duration. These include continuous effects, where a numeric variable is subjected to a rate of change while…Read more on Efficient Temporal Piecewise-Linear Numeric Planning with Lazy Consistency Checking
Microsporidia: a new taxonomic, evolutionary, and ecological synthesis
1 August, 2022 by Martin Rogers
Microsporidian diversity is vast. There is a renewed drive to understand how microsporidian pathological, genomic, and ecological traits relate to their phylogeny. We comprehensively sample and phylogenetically analyse 125 microsporidian…Read more on Microsporidia: a new taxonomic, evolutionary, and ecological synthesis
Tipping cycles
1 August, 2022 by Michael Thorne
Instability in Jacobians is determined by the presence of an eigenvalue lying in the right half plane. The coefficients of the characteristic polynomial contain information related to the specific matrix…Causes of the 2015 North Atlantic cold anomaly in a global state estimate
6 July, 2022 by Dan(i) Jones, Rachael Sanders
The subpolar North Atlantic is an important part of the global ocean and climate system, with SST variability in the region influencing the climate of Europe and North America. While…Read more on Causes of the 2015 North Atlantic cold anomaly in a global state estimate
The International Bathymetric Chart of the Southern Ocean Version 2 (IBCSO v2)
7 June, 2022 by Alexander Tate, Alice Fremand, Hamish Pritchard, Kelly Hogan, Peter Fretwell, Robert Larter
The Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica is a region that is key to a range of climatic and oceanographic processes with worldwide effects, and is characterised by high biological productivity and…Read more on The International Bathymetric Chart of the Southern Ocean Version 2 (IBCSO v2)
Whales from space dataset, an annotated satellite image dataset of whales for training machine learning models
27 May, 2022 by Hannah Cubaynes, Peter Fretwell
Monitoring whales in remote areas is important for their conservation; however, using traditional survey platforms (boat and plane) in such regions is logistically difficult. The use of very high-resolution satellite…Localized impacts and economic implications from high temperature disruption days under climate change
20 May, 2022 by Charles Simpson, Erik Mackie, Scott Hosking, Risa Ueno
Most studies into the effects of climate change have headline results in the form of a global change in mean temperature. More useful for businesses and governments, however, are measures…
Quantifying the causes and consequences of variation in satellite‐derived population indices: a case study of emperor penguins
19 April, 2022 by Philip Trathan, Peter Fretwell
Very high-resolution satellite (VHR) imagery is a promising tool for estimating the abundance of wildlife populations, especially in remote regions where traditional surveys are limited by logistical challenges. Emperor penguins…
Attention-based machine vision models and techniques for solar wind speed forecasting using solar EUV images
17 March, 2022 by Edward Brown, Nigel Meredith, Richard Horne
Extreme ultraviolet images taken by the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly on board the Solar Dynamics Observatory make it possible to use deep vision techniques to forecast solar wind speed - a…Asymptotic analysis of subglacial plumes in stratified environments
9 March, 2022 by Alexander Bradley, Rosie Williams, Robert Arthern
Accurate predictions of basal melt rates on ice shelves are necessary for precise projections of the future behaviour of ice sheets. The computational expense associated with completely resolving the cavity…Read more on Asymptotic analysis of subglacial plumes in stratified environments
Vegetation interactions with geotechnical properties and erodibility of salt marsh sediments
5 February, 2022 by Ben Evans
Salt marshes provide diverse ecosystem services including coastal protection, habitat provision and carbon sequestration. The loss of salt marshes is a global scale phenomenon, of great socio-economic concern due to…The Time Machine framework: monitoring and prediction of biodiversity loss
1 February, 2022 by Scott Hosking
Transdisciplinary solutions are needed to achieve the sustainability of ecosystem services for future generations. We propose a framework to identify the causes of ecosystem function loss and to forecast the…Read more on The Time Machine framework: monitoring and prediction of biodiversity loss
Ventilation of the Southern Ocean pycnocline
1 January, 2022 by Dan(i) Jones
Ocean ventilation is the transfer of tracers and young water from the surface down into the ocean interior. The tracers that can be transported to depth include anthropogenic heat and…Convolutional conditional neural processes for local climate downscaling
1 January, 2022 by Scott Hosking
A new model is presented for multisite statistical downscaling of temperature and precipitation using convolutional conditional neural processes (convCNPs). ConvCNPs are a recently developed class of models that allow deep-learning…Read more on Convolutional conditional neural processes for local climate downscaling
AI Lab Leadership
- Scott Hosking (Leader)
- Maria Fox (Deputy)
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