Intel & Accenture Use AI To Save The Coral Reef

Accenture, Intel and the Sulubaaï Environmental Foundation announced Project: CORaiL, an artificial intelligence (AI) - powered solution to monitor, characterize and analyze coral reef resilience. Since May 2019, it’s been deployed to the reef surrounding Pangatalan Island, Philipines. Researchers have been using the 40,000 images collected to study the effects of climate change in the area. 

According to the United Nations Environment Programme, coral reefs protect coastlines from tropical storms, provide food and income for 1 billion people, and generate $9.6 billion in tourism and recreation. Due to overfishing, bottom trawling, warming temperatures and unsustainable coastal development, coral reefs are endangered. Global climate change is also a threat to the coral reef ecosystem. Monitoring coral reefs around the world for the effects of ocean acidification, or changing pH in seawater, will become increasingly important for climate change researchers. 

Restoring and supplementing existing degraded reefs is critical to the survivals of many species that depend on the coral reef ecosystem.

Rose Schooler, Intel corporate vice president in the Sales and Marketing Group says, “Project: CORaiL is an incredible example of how AI and edge technology can be used to assist researchers with monitoring and restoring the coral reef. We are very proud to partner with Accenture and the SulubaaÏ Environmental Foundation on this important effort to protect our planet.”  

Traditional coral reef monitoring efforts involve human divers either directly collecting data underwater or manually capturing video footage and photos of the reef to be analyzed later. These methods are widely trusted and employed. But there are several disadvantages. Divers can interfere with wildlife behavior and thus unintentionally alter research results. Divers can only stay in water for 30 minutes at a time to take photos.