ReefCloud is a digital tool that uses machine learning and advanced analysis to rapidly extract and share data from images of coral reefs anywhere in the world.
The user-friendly platform is positioned to transform coral reef monitoring and management by allowing the world’s coral reef monitoring community to work together, in real time.
It standardises collected data, analysing coral reef composition with 80-90 percent accuracy, 700 times faster than traditional manual assessment. This saves weeks and months of labour, freeing precious reef management resources.
Users submit photos of the reef taken during their surveys. ReefCloud uses facial recognition technology to identify around seven million parameters from the colour, shape and size of coral.
It can then identify the type of coral and analyse how the reef is changing over time; facilitating more timely and informed decision-making to improve the long-term resilience of global coral reefs.
ReefCloud is the democratisation of knowledge. To date it is being regularly used in Australia, Palau, Fiji, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and the Maldives.
ReefCloud was the overall winner of the 2022 Asia-Pacific Spatial Excellence Awards for Environment and Sustainability. In the 2022 Fast Company World Changing Ideas Awards it received an honourable mention in the AI and Data category and was a finalist in both the Nature and Water categories
ReefCloud was developed by the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) in collaboration with:
- Palau International Coral Reef Center (PICRC)
- Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) Fiji
- the International Coral Reef Initiative (ICRI)
- University of South Pacific
- Queensland University of Technology
- Marine Ecology Consulting
- Maldives Marine Research Institute and
- C2O Pacific
with in kind support from Accenture and the Allen Coral Atlas.
