AI4Good: Remote sensing enables monitoring life above and under water & Global vegetation monitoring with probabilistic deep learning

Remote sensing enables monitoring life above and under water

The oceans are a major source of biodiversity and food. The preservation of the quality of the foodchain, as well as of life underwater is a primary concern for society. However, observing water media routinely is a complex task that remote sensing technology empowered by AI can unlock. This talk will present research avenues where the use of remote sensing can help monitoring marine ecosystem, both above – via the monitoring of floating plastic debris – and under the water surface – via 3D reconstruction and mapping of coral reefs.

Global vegetation monitoring with probabilistic deep learning

Mapping forest structure on a global scale is an importantcomponent for understanding the Earth’s carbon cycle and conservingbiodiversity.Several new space missions have been developed to support these goals by measuring forest structure to estimate biomass and carbon stocks. To analyze the vast amount of remote sensing data, efficient modelling approaches are needed that are robust to the inherent noise in these data. Data-driven approaches, especially modern deep learning methods, promise great potential for interpreting and combining data from different space missions to estimate vegetation parameters with enhanced spatial and temporal resolution. This talk will present recent research results for global vegetation height mapping exploiting ESA’s Sentinel 2 optical imagery and NASA’s GEDI full waveform LIDAR. By integrating probabilistic deep learning approaches (i.e. deep ensembles), the predictive uncertainty of the models is quantified, which is crucial for downstream applications that depend on reliable estimates.

This live event includes a 30-minute networking event hosted on the AI for Good Neural Network. This is your opportunity to ask questions, interact with the panelists and participants and build connections with the AI for Good community.