25
INTEL 2020
Why It Matters: Coral reefs are among the world's most
diverse ecosystems, with more than 800 species of
corals providing habitat and shelter for approximately
25 percent of global marine life. Coral reefs are also
extremely beneficial to humans: They protect coastlines
from tropical storms, provide food and income for
1 billion people, and generate $9.6 billion (USD) in
tourism and recreation each year. But according to the
United Nations Environment Programme, coral reefs
are endangered and rapidly degrading because of
overfishing, bottom trawling, warming temperatures and
unsustainable coastal development.
How It Works: The abundance and diversity of fish
serve as an important indicator of overall reef health.
Traditional coral reef monitoring efforts involve human
divers either directly collecting data underwater or
manually capturing video footage and photos of the reef
to be analyzed later. Those methods are widely trusted
and employed, but they come with disadvantages: Divers
can interfere with wildlife behavior and unintentionally
affect survey results, and time underwater is limited as
divers can often only take photos and video for around
30 minutes.
Engineers from Accenture, Sulubaaï and Intel combined
their expertise for Project: CORaiL to help researchers
restore and supplement the existing degraded reef in
Learn More
TERASIC TECHNOLOGIES
OPENVINO STARTER
KITS GT EDITION
An artificial concrete reef to provide support for unstable coral fragments underwater is installed by Accenture, Intel and Sulubaaï
Environmental Foundation in the coral reef surrounding Pangatalan Island in the Philippines. (Credit: Accenture)
"Artificial intelligence provides
unprecedented opportunities to
solve some of society's most vexing
problems," said Jason Mitchell, a
managing director in Accenture's
Communications, Media & Technology
practice. "Our ecosystem of corporate
and social partners for this 'AI for social
good' project proves that there is
strength in numbers to make a positive
environmental impact."
the Philippines. First, they built a Sulu-Reef Prosthesis,
a concrete underwater platform designed by Sulubaaï
to provide strong support for unstable coral fragments.
The Sulu-Reef Prosthesis incorporates fragments
of living coral within it that will grow and expand,
providing a hybrid habitat for fish and marine life.
Then, they strategically placed intelligent underwater
video cameras, equipped with the Accenture Applied
Intelligence Video Analytics Services Platform (VASP) to
detect and photograph fish as they pass. VASP uses AI
to count and classify the marine life, with the data then
sent to a surface dashboard, where it provides analytics
and trends to researchers in real-time, enabling them to
make data-driven decisions to protect the coral reef.
"The value of your data depends on how quickly you
can glean insights to make decisions from it," said
Athina Kanioura, Accenture's chief analytics officer and
Accenture Applied Intelligence lead. "With the ability to
do real-time analysis on streaming video, VASP enables
us to tap into a rich data source—in effect doing 'hands-
on' monitoring without disrupting the underwater
environment."
Accenture's VASP solution is powered by Intel
®
Xeon
®
processors, Intel
®
FPGA Programmable Acceleration
Cards, Intel
®
Movidius™ VPU and the Intel
®
Distribution of
OpenVINO™ toolkit.
What's Next: Engineers are at work on the next-
generation Project: CORaiL prototype, which will include
an optimized convolutional neural network and a
backup power supply. They are also considering infrared
cameras, which enable nighttime video capture to create
a complete picture of the coral ecosystem. Additional
uses could include studying the migration rate of
tropical fish to colder waters and monitoring intrusion in
protected or restricted underwater areas.
