E-commerce giant, Alibaba, has agreed to explore collaboration with Kenya’s Ministry of Tourism and Wildlife to protect the country’s endangered animals.
According to Alizila, Alibaba’s news wing, the organisation will begin talks in support of the Kenya Wildlife Protection Project that will focus on ways in which Alibaba Cloud’s technology can be deployed to the Tsavo East and West National Parks in an attempt to protect the parks’ wildlife.
Simon Hu, Alibaba Cloud President said: “The collaboration underscores the positive impact that technology, including cloud computing, artificial intelligence and ‘internet of things’ technology, can have on the planet and on wildlife protection.”
The hope is that Kenya will be able to leverage off Alibaba Cloud’s computing capabilities to track endangered elephants, rhinos and lions. The discussions are looking at ways of deploying animal-tracking sensors, infrared trap cameras, smart weather stations, ranger devices and wide-area drones to collect real-time data on the movements and health of the animals. This will then be fed back into a monitored platform. Additionally, equipment to be used will be solar-powered and lightweight.
Once data is collected, the platform will then analyse and predict animal behaviour and routes travelled, assisting in raising alerts to potential danger like poaching and human-animal conflict, helping ranger teams on the ground respond timeously and with knowledge of the nature of the threat.
Source: Tourismupdate.co.za
