The Natural History Museum is opening the gates to a new five-hectare urban garden, supported by AWS

A new, free-to-visit garden at London's Natural History Museum has transformed the area around the Museum's grounds. Opening to the public on July 18, the gardens will feature a network of sensors, giving the Museum's team of more than 350 research scientists unprecedented access to a wealth of biodiversity and environmental data.

The museum is working in partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to enrich and accelerate this vital work. Data collected from the gardens will be fed into the new Data Ecosystem Museum, a data platform built using AWS cloud technologies.

One of the most studied urban sites of its kind in the UK

The laboratory-turned-garden is equipped with a network of 25 sensors that will collect a wide range of environmental data from underwater recordings in a pond, to bird calls and traffic noises. All this data will be collected, enriched and distributed in the new data ecosystem of the Natural History Museum. Once fully installed, the network of sensors in the gardens will collect up to 20 terabytes of audio data in the first year. Museum researchers will use this new wealth of data through machine learning (ML), making it easier and faster to draw conclusions and practically support the recovery of urban nature in the UK.

Dr John Tweddle, who directs the Angela Marmont Center for Nature UK, explains why the gardens will boost biodiversity research in London, as well as educate and entertain the public: Because of our partnership with AWS, the Natural History Museum will to become one of the most well-studied urban biodiversity environments in the UK, perhaps the world. This will become a benchmark study site for understanding the impact of urban environments on wildlife that we hope other organizations around the world can use.

The museum opened in 1881 and we never had a coherent plan for the gardens, he said. The new gardens will now tell the story of the evolution of life on Earth, but will also reflect on the impact humans have had on the landscape, as well as the incredible wealth of wildlife we ​​can find around us in the towns and cities some of theirs may be new to London or even new to science.

A data ecosystem to study urban biodiversity

In addition to collecting data from the new garden, the Data Ecosystem will process and make available data from the Museum's community science projects, such as Nature Overheard program, in which community scientists record audio in their local area to help discover the impact of road noise on insect populations. This audio can now be centralized to give scientists even deeper insights into biodiversity at local and national levels.

To date, 156 audio recordings have been uploaded from Nature Overheard to the data ecosystem. This is in addition to over 57,000 visual observations of wildlife obtained from historical records from the Museum's wildlife gardens since 1995, which have already been added.

We are delighted to be working with the Natural History Museum to use digital technology to build a better scientific understanding of the UK's biodiversity and identify solutions to support the recovery of nature in urban environments, said Tanuja Randery, Management of Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Director at AWS.

The new data ecosystem, built on AWS, is already transforming and accelerating the Museum's research and community science capabilities, helping scientists collaborate and access data through a secure and scalable platform. As the gardens open, we will continue to see the amount of data available to Museum scientists grow in volume and richness.

A centralized solution to drive collaborative research

For the first time, Museum scientists have a way to securely store and process research data using the Data Ecosystem, which can easily grow as more and more data is collected over time. According to Dr Tweddle, this data is already helping biodiversity researchers take a more joined-up approach when collaborating with other scientists studying urban biodiversity in different areas of the country.

Data is the fundamental currency when it comes to understanding how and why nature is changing, he said. Over the years, we've officially followed wildlife to see what we have here in the UK and the changes that are happening. In that time we have actually been able to observe some new species in the UK and we were hoping that the new technology and automated monitoring we now have with AWS would help us discover more.

Reflecting on past efforts, Dr Tweddle said: As scientists, we have not always worked as a team. We worked as independent researchers, each building our own data solutions for each new project. With AWS, we're creating a centralized data solution for all our UK-focused biodiversity programmes, which will allow researchers across the country to collaborate in new ways that we haven't been able to before seen.

From July 18, the garden will be open every day from 10:00. Visitors should book a free ticket in advance online for guaranteed museum entry.
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