The call for projects Challenge IA-Biodiv: "Research in artificial intelligence in the field of biodiversity" has been officially launched

The call for projects Challenge IA-Biodiv: “Research in artificial intelligence in the field of biodiversity” has been officially launched

19 mars 2021

The AI-Biodiv Challenge was officially launched this week by the French National Research Agency (ANR) and the French Development Agency. This joint call for research projects in artificial intelligence, based on an international collaborative research approach, aims to support research projects on the development of AI methods to predict biodiversity trends and produce reliable indicators. The AI-Biodiv Challenge will be open until 31 August 2021 and is part of the National Research Strategy on Artificial Intelligence and the National Biodiversity Plan.

ANR and AFD have launched the IA-Biodiv Challenge, which focuses on three objectives:

The optimization of AI methods for biodiversity research,
the design of innovative prediction models and indicators,
design of hybrid AI methods.

This challenge is aimed at the AI and biodiversity scientific communities in France and AFD’s partner countries in Africa.

AI research for a better prediction of biodiversity changes

The development of knowledge on biodiversity and its evolution is a major scientific and societal challenge, at the heart of the National Biodiversity Plan. However, given the complexity of interactions between ecosystems, their interactions and feedbacks, and the heterogeneity of data, current indicators have limitations in predicting changes in biodiversity. AI can make significant contributions, with new dedicated solutions. France has set up a national AI research programme to meet this major challenge.

Data structuring, a crucial issue

The difficulty of structuring data is now identified as one of the main obstacles to knowledge of biodiversity, particularly by the “IPCC of biodiversity”, the IPBES (Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services). Based on this observation, the IA-Biodiv Challenge was developed to mobilize the expertise of the AI and biodiversity scientific communities for the constitution of a dedicated virtual research environment.

“IA-Biodiv-Net”: towards making datasets and AI modules available for research

After the evaluation and selection of the projects by an international committee, the selected research teams will work on the elaboration and development of this environment in a collaborative manner for four years.

Called “IA-Biodiv-Net”, developed by and for researchers, it will host the datasets, the AI modules developed by the consortia participating in the challenge as well as the evaluation modules set up by the operational consortium. It will meet, as much as possible, the FAIR principles (Easy to find, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable), will be intended to be enriched, beyond this challenge, and will be accessible to all interested scientific communities. It will thus contribute, in the long term, to the dissemination of permanent data sets for future scientific work in AI and in the field of biodiversity.

Collective reflections on scientific challenges and research approaches

The Challenge is a specific funding instrument of the ANR that allows the simultaneous exploration of different scientific or technological approaches to a single problem. It aims to compare and share the ideas, approaches and work of the funded consortia, and to encourage the establishment of common references between scientific communities from different backgrounds.

In the IA-Biodiv Challenge, the scientific follow-up of the funded consortia will be led by an operational consortium and their work will be evaluated during annual meetings aimed at characterizing and sharing the AI solutions considered. This process also encourages cooperation between the various consortia.

4.8 million to support research

A total of €4.8 million will be mobilized to finance this scientific challenge, which is based on a partnership between the ANR (€1.5 million) and the AFD (€1.5 million) and is supported by a donation from Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research (€1.8 million).

For the implementation of the Challenge, AFD will benefit from the technical support of Expertise France, a key player in international technical cooperation, which makes it possible to finance and support African consortiums.

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Translated from L’appel à projets Challenge IA-Biodiv : « Recherche en intelligence artificielle dans le champ de la biodiversité » a été officiellement lancé