Using computer science to get more insight in the inhabitants of coral. That is the goal of Fish4knowledge, a research project in which an international group of researchers, among them from the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI), will collaborate. In the project, that is starting 1 October, at least ten underwater cameras are going to film about 3,000 fish, crustaceans and shellfish species. Fish4knowledge aims at providing intelligent access to these video data for biologists to draw conclusions on the development of the species. The team at CWI, headed by Lynda Hardman, will develop methods for interactive information access to the collected data.
Underwater cameras
To protect the biodiversity of our coral it is important to gain insight in how marine ecosystems react on the environment and changes in our climate. By using underwater cameras biologists get a better and more reliable picture of what is happening at an ecological level. With the current technology it is still impossible to glean useful information out of months of video footage. And watching all the video data in person is extremely time consuming and boring. By combining automatic image analysis technology and intelligent search technology, biologists get high quality and automated analyses of the data within reach. This gives them a treasure trove of quantitative and qualitative information that may lead to new current and future research questions.
Interaction
The team at CWI focuses on the interaction of biologists with the system. ‘We try to make clear how the automatically deduced results relate to the raw video data,’ says Lynda Hardman. ‘The system gives no exact numbers, but best estimates based on specific demands for certainty. By giving biologists access to different layers in the analysis, they can set these demands themselves. It is for instance possible to take averages over different time periods, or exclude results where the computer is not more than 50% sure that a moving object is a fish. We could set these parameters ourselves, but placing biologists themselves in control makes the system more flexible. And what’s maybe more important: it creates confidence in this new method of doing scientific research. Analysis of underwater video data can ultimately provide much more reliable data on fish numbers than the snapshot data of manual counting, but it needs a different mindset.’
Various disciplines
Research leader of the project is the University of Edinburgh. Apart from CWI, other partners in the project are Universita degli studi di Catania (image processing) and the National Applied Research Laboratories in Taipei (marine biology). The CWI research group Interactive Information Access, headed by Lynda Hardman, is taking part of the research in the Netherlands. The duration of the research project is three years. The project is funded by the Seventh Framework Program of the European Union. Managing the data explosion is an important theme at CWI. This research shows a good example.
Source illustration: Coral reef monitoring in Kenting by NCHC Taiwan
