How AI can help the environment

How AI can help the environment

Subject :Science and Technology

Section: Awareness in IT

Context: AI has also been touted as a powerful tool to help tackle global crises, such as climate change.

Details:

A study commissioned by tech giant Microsoft estimated that AI applications in the sectors of agriculture, water, energy and transport could lead to a 4% cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 — equivalent to the annual emissions of Australia, Canada and Japan combined.

six ways it’s being put to use to help the environment:

1. Saving trees with AI ‘guardians’

• Planting acoustic monitoring sensors in forests to detect and track illegal logging and land clearing.

2. Shrinking the carbon footprint of steel

• In mining of raw materials for steel production, AI can be used to optimised and reduce the amount of mined ingredients-or alloys- by upto one third.

3. Cutting energy waste in buildings

• By collecting the data from commercial buildings and aanlysisng them via machine learning, the heating and cooling systems of commercial buildings can be optimised. These tweaks can save 10-30% of the energy used in a typical commercial building.

4. Fighting poaching with algorithms

• AI based bracelets can be fitted to the animals to track their movement and illegal poaching of vulnerable animals.

5. Smart farming

• AI system can draw on data from solar-powered sensors monitoring the microclimate around crops.
• These insights can be used to make precise recommendations about plant health and exactly how much water and fertilizer to use. This can both boost yields and reduce wasted resources.

6. Using computers to plot clouds

• The technology can be useful in the field of agriculture, solar energy generation among others.