Automated Detection of Marine Megafauna from High Resolution Digital Aerial Imagery
Offshore site investigations
Green Rebel is Irish based, specialised in offshore site investigations, providing data services which spans across MetOcean, Aerial and Marine Geophysical. With a fleet of purpose-built vessels, aircraft, floating LiDAR buoys for data acquisition, the capability to be able process and analyse the data in house, they are able to provide consultations for site selection, de-risking investments and accelerating green energy development.
The initial screening of imagery from commercial digital aerial marine ecology survey is important, as this supports the planning of offshore renewable energy projects (ORE). The process involved huge number of digital images being manually annotated to label classification on the marine animals with locational data. The concept is to utilise Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence to train a model that is capable of learning the features or characterisation of identifying marine life in order to streamline and automate the screening process.
Feasibility study
The feasibility study is conducted to investigate the challenge of detecting marine animals on the ocean, state of the art Machine Learning or Artificial Intelligence algorithms for the application supported by existing case studies. A final Machine Learning based solution was chosen, and methodology was written to illustrate the operation of the algorithm on a baseline parameter.
The proposed algorithm was then trained on a local machine, evaluated using performance metrics and unseen data. Image results and accuracy level were recorded to validate the operation of the algorithm.
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Employees
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Primary Divisions
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IPP Feasibility Study
“This project represents a significant step forward in the automation of marine wildlife detection through the use of high-resolution digital aerial imagery and machine learning models. By leveraging AI technologies, we have improved the efficiency and accuracy of identifying marine megafauna, supporting the planning of offshore renewable energy projects while conserving marine biodiversity.”
Kieran Ivers – Director, Green Rebel
Green Rebel & CREDIT Technology Gateway partnership
The company has obtained a baseline machine learning model that can identify marine animals on the sea with acceptable range of accuracy level, with proper recommendation on hardware to integrate into Green Rebel’s existing workflow and infrastructure. Green Rebel has expressed their interest in transitioning into using satellite images to localise the marine animals, and the advantage of the existing machine learning model is the adaptability of the model, whereas the new satellite images can be trained as additional new data using transfer learning method.