The Semantic Reef: an eco-informatics approach for modelling coral bleaching within the Great Barrier Reef

The Semantic Reef project is an application of eco-informatics and represents the first time that semantic tools have been applied to the study of coral reef ecosystems. It aims to develop a platform that combines emerging Semantic Web, Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) and Grid Computing technologies to make unconnected datasets computer-understandable. The key goal is to improve our capacity to generate timely warnings of environmental conditions that are conducive to coral bleaching. The Semantic Reef model is a tool for hypothesis-driven research and problem-solving methods, which will allow for the maintenance and analysis of disparate data streams. The initial validation exercise, to test the accuracy of the model using sea surface temperature and community composition datasets (both static and dynamic data), is presented. It is the unequivocal scientific consensus that climate change is a great threat to the Great Barrier Reef (GBR). The efforts described here represent an eco-informatics application of new information technologies to the forecasting and monitoring of climate-change-related impacts on the GBR. It is likely that combining the advanced technologies described here with powerful ecological modelling will result in entirely new lines of enquiry, as well as an improved understanding and management of environmental systems. While coral reefs are the focus environment herein, the concepts will be applicable to many other disciplines as the field matures.

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11th Annual Environmental Postgraduate Conference - Environmental Research Event

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978-0-64-648411-2

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