Emily Darling & Kim Fisher - The Challenges of Mapping Coral Reefs When Satellites Can't See Them - #MBM 23

06/15/22 • 95 min

Emily Darling & Kim Fisher both work at the Wildlife Conservation Society, respectively as the Director of Coral Reef & as Spatial Analyst. They have developed MERMAID, a platform enabling coral reef scientists to aggregate & share their data together. One of the main challenges they tackle being most measurements need to happen in the field as opposed to being able to leverage satellite imagery.

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Episode Sponsors:

Radiant Earth Foundation: Apply for the 2022 Radiant MLHub Impact Award for agriculture-related applications for Africa - with a $5,000 cash prize.
Element84
- Dan Pilone’s appearance on the podcast

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About Emily:

About Kim:

World Conservation Society

Shownotes

MERMAID
Wildlife Conservation Society
Allen Coras Atlas
SparkGeo
Books & Podcast Recomendations:
- We can do hard things
- Where should we begin
- Song Exploder
- Data Feminism: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/data-feminism
- Here GOES Radiotelescope
- Mannahatta/Welikia:
  - book: https://www.amazon.com/Mannahatta-Natural-History-York-City/dp/1419707485/
  - website: https://welikia.org/

Timestamps

00:00 - Introduction
03:07 - Kim & Emily presenting themselves
07:49 - Computer Science & Data at the service of Science
17:30 - A symbiotic relationship Software Engineering & Marine Biology
23:38 - High level overview of what MERMAID is
26:52 - What problem does MERMAID solve?
32:28 - Getting traction on a scientific tool
37:37 - Stories on top of the data
46:00 - Another simple question: Why is coral reef important?
49:55 - Working with Policy Makers
55:28 - Coral Reef is still measured with pen & paper
1:01:55 - Partnering with SparkGeo, a geospatial consultancy
1:10:54 - Thinking about projects over the long term
1:12:45 - Financing a Non-Profit project
1:19:40 - Transparency in Non-Profits through Open-Source
1:25:45 - The impact of Data Science on Emily’s work
1:29:01 - Book & Podcast Recommendations

Feel free to reach out!

06/15/22 • 95 min

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