Why. To explore how new emerging technologies can be used to monitor bat activity levels and species across the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.
What. Nature-Smart Cities brings together environmental researchers and technologists to develop the world’s first end-to-end open source system for monitoring bats. The core technology is smart ultrasonic bat sensors – called Echo Boxes. Each Echo Box works like ‘Shazam for bats’ by listening to environmental audio, detecting bat calls and identifying their species – all within a few seconds. Fifteen Echo Boxes are installed across the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and have detected more than 300,000 bat calls from 5 different species. Check out the live bat data website to see how many bats are currently active in the park: http://www.batslondon.com/
How. Physical prototyping, digital fabrication, machine learning, edge processing, IoT data management, workshops, stakeholder engagement, qualitative analysis.
Who. In collaboration with Dr Alison Fairbrass, Dr Daniyar Turmukhambetov, Dr Michael Firman, Professor Gabriel Brostow, Professor Kate Jones, plus others from Arup, Bat Conservation Trust, and London Wildlife Trust. Thanks to LLDC and the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.
Sarah Gallacher 