As demand for resources continues to grow, nations turn their attention to the oceans, not least Canada with its world’s longest coastline. Along with the changing climate, the increased human presence impacts the marine ecosystems, especially in the Arctic. Therefore, to ensure sustainable use of marine resources, we must keep a vigilant eye on our ocean’s health.
Since 2017, MERIDIAN, funded under the CFI Cyberinfrastructure program, with provincial support from Nova Scotia, Québec and British Columbia, and headquartered at Dalhousie’s Institute for Big Data Analytics, has established itself as a unique endeavour in Canada and internationally, advancing the use of Big Data, AI, Machine Learning in Ocean Science, to the benefit of our oceans.
In the years to come, the MERIDIAN team, supported by a new $3.1M CFI Innovation Fund award, the Nova Scotia Research fund, and Dalhousie University, will continue collaborating with academic researchers, government scientists and NGO groups on solving pressing ocean issues such as protecting the endangered North Atlantic right whale. In the context of the “Artificial Intelligence Meets Oceans” project, the MERIDIAN team will be building Marine Artificial Intelligence Platform (MAIPL), a novel virtual laboratory that will make MERIDIAN’s AI toolkits accessible to a wide range of Canadian and international ocean researchers.
Follow our progress here on our homepage in the years to come!
