Our AI for Sustainability theme aims to explore the transformative potential of artificial intelligence (AI) in addressing the world’s most pressing environmental challenges, including climate change, biodiversity loss, and water resource management. These interconnected issues require innovative solutions, and AI offers new possibilities to tackle them at scale.
While traditional methods have provided valuable insights, the complexity of environmental systems demands more advanced tools. AI has already been applied in specific areas such as weather prediction, natural hazard monitoring, and water usage optimisation. However, these applications tend to be narrow in focus, limiting their broader impact on sustainability.
The emergence of Foundation AI presents a game-changing opportunity for environmental science. These large-scale, pre-trained AI models can analyse vast datasets and adapt to a wide range of tasks, offering the potential to uncover patterns across environmental systems, improve predictions, and support evidence-based decision-making.
Our research brings together experts from various disciplines to explore the opportunities and challenges of using AI for sustainability. By collaborating with stakeholders across sectors, we aim to develop the next generation of AI systems that can address environmental challenges, while ensuring that ethical and safety considerations are met.
Meet our BISCA Affiliates who are working within this theme.
Assistant Professor in Sociology and Social Policy
Dr Justyna Bandola-Gill is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology at the School of Social Policy and Society, University of Birmingham, UK.
Professor of Environmental Nanosciences
Staff profile for Iseult Lynch, Professor of Environmental Nanosciences in the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Birmingham.
Associate Professor in Procurement and Operations Management
Gu Pang is a Senior Lecturer in Procurement and Operations Management at Birmingham Business School, University of Birmingham.
Assistant Professor in Resilience Engineering
Staff profile for Dr Xilin Xia.
