Co-creating open-source conservation technology // Professor Alex Rogers & Dr Andrew Markham, both Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford
The emergence of low-cost, low-volume manufacturing processes such as 3D printing, laser cutting and online PCB assembly services, combined with intelligent algorithms and artificial intelligence, mean that it has never been easier to create custom hardware sensors to address particular conservation and environmental monitoring challenges. However, many endeavours in this space fail to scale beyond small trial deployments and thus fail to achieve significant impact. Often this is because the wrong technology was chosen, the wrong problem was solved, or because scale and support beyond the lifetime of the individual project was not considered at the outset. This seminar will explore approaches to co-creating conservation technology, whereby conservation experts and technologists work together to design and build low-cost sustainable open-source solutions to real world conservation challenges.