As MAMBO comes to a close this August, we're proud to see the tools developed over the course of the project carry forward into another EU-funded project: Biodiversity Meets Data (BMD). Over the past years, MAMBO has advanced camera, sound and remote sensing technologies to facilitate data capture for species tracking and habitat assessment. BMD builds on this foundation and takes the next step, addressing what happens after the data is generated.

To that end, BMD is creating a centralised platform, the Biodiversity Explorer, which will provide direct access to captured data alongside tools for analysis and visualisation. The new project will combine high-throughput biodiversity monitoring tools - camera traps, audio recorders, and eDNA sampling - with AI taxon identification services. For image and audio monitoring, BMD builds directly on technologies developed within MAMBO, including the co-development of the Multi Source Model (MSM) with Naturalis Biodiversity Center and four audio AI models for birds, bats, amphibians, grasshoppers and crickets. The AI algorithms used to identify species captured by these devices also trace their origins back to MAMBO's work.

All of these technologies will be mainstreamed directly to natural area managers, Natura 2000 site managers, and policy makers through BMD. But turning promising AI workflows into tools that hold up in real operations, not just on a researcher's laptop, remains a key challenge. As MAMBO partner and BMD project coordinator Niels Raes put it in a recent CORDIS Results Pack: “A key challenge has been to combine the latest AI developments and functionality with user-friendly tools for accessing the results in formats relevant to stakeholders.”

This is precisely the challenge the Biodiversity Explorer aims to address by packaging tools, data and analyses into a single access point that supports reporting under the EU Nature Directives. The platform will also offer tools and guidelines to mobilise historical baseline data and species checklists, and will publish captured and analysed biodiversity data on open infrastructures such as GBIF and OBIS.

Follow BMD's journey here.