 Our next presentation is by Nicholas Simpson of UNDP Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean Accelerator Lab. Hello from Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean. My name is Nicholas Simpson and I am currently the resident explorer at the United Nations Development Program, UNDP's Accelerator Lab in Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean. And today I'd like to invite you to join me as we travel to Barbados to take a deep dive to experience some of the work that we have collaborated on, which is utilizing artificial intelligence for a digital blue planet. And more specifically looking at AI from the lens of a revolutionizing access to marine data in the Eastern Caribbean region. These images are reflective of the sad reality of the headlines of today, the multitude of crises facing our ocean from climate change to natural hazards. We're experiencing more intense and frequent storms and hurricanes, volcanic eruptions to land based sources of pollution such as agricultural runoff and plastic pollution to unsustainable coastal development. The challenges are many. However, there is hope, and this is where the Accelerator Lab network which comprises of 91 labs in 115 countries around the world comes in, because we are experimenting and testing to learn what works and what does not in order to achieve sustainable development faster. In Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean, due to national and regional interest and commitment in the blue economy, we chose this area of work to focus on. And at the lab when we speak about the blue economy, we are looking at the ocean as an opportunity for economic diversification, for job creation, for livelihoods, but also for environmental sustainability, ocean health, and building resilience to external shocks, such as the climate crisis. We work primarily in a few key sectors of the blue economy, such as fisheries, waste management, renewable energy, sustainable or what we're now calling responsible tourism, as well as marine conservation and restoration. There are colours of the economy and other types of the economy, such as the green economy and the circular economy. We see the blue economy as a concept which acts as a pathway to achieve sustainable development with positive economic environmental and social impacts, which are good for people and prosperity. At our lab in Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean, we've been working on data and digital a lot. And as such, I would like you to meet Antonio, who is an innovator from Beijing Digital Creations, that we have been collaborating with. And with his permission, and those of his team, I am going to be sharing one innovation that we have worked on. So our proposed solution is Blue Bot, which uses robotics, artificial intelligence and deep machine learning for access to marine data. And this pilot in Barbados is the first, and if not the first, one of the first in the Caribbean with an active AI monitoring system for our reefs. And what is also really important about this is the digitalization of marine data, which is giving individuals and communities a voice. I am a firm believer that we need to marry both traditional and cultural knowledge with science to inform and try innovation from a grassroots level so that there is a community to cabinet approach in everything that we do. In terms of Blue Bot and a bit more on the process, I wish to invite you to join me to see how we collect data. Here we are deploying the underwater robot Sarah at a West Coast location in Barbados. And now piloting the robot and you will soon see the robot swimming and diving through the water and as you can see, unfortunately, the health of some of our reefs is suffering, not looking too good. In Barbados, specifically 75% of our islands fringing reefs, which are then near shore reefs are in very poor condition, according to the most recent reef scorecard by the Coastal Zone Management Unit in the Ministry of Maritime Affairs and the Blue Bot and the Center for Resource Management and Environmental Studies at the University of the West in East Cave Hill. So what we're hoping to do with Blue Bot is collect data more quickly with even more accuracy and where there cannot be human assistance to collect data, this bot can come in to do remote surveying. So now moving along to share a little bit more with you on how this process works overall and in relatively simple terms that uses robots in combination with deep machine learning and artificial intelligence to collect video data, which is then used to generate open data sets. So using this clip as an example, the state is being collected by the robot and the small sample of video content can then be analyzed by the Agent Digital Creation's proprietary AI called SILA. And SILA is an AI tool that uses specially trained neural networks, as well as statistical methods to analyze and compute numerical reef health metrics. So continuing a bit more on our journey and now you know a bit more about AI with deep machine learning. So what this image shows or these two images rather show are two visuals taken by the robot and below shows two open data sets for time and for parrotfish. And this could be used for example to support governments in decision making and it's really helping to tackle many challenges and you know maybe this could show. Okay, this is what we're seeing. We have a baseline we can compare this to 50 years ago. This is what the reef looked like. This is what we predict the reefs will look like in 50 years as they continue to experience many shocks such as the climate crisis. And this may be the best location for a marine manage or a marine protected area, for example. In terms of developing this work in the future, we're already seeing fast potential applications for example in post disaster assessment from natural hazards. In this case, you can see this visual here, which is very high turbidity, maybe caused by the ash post 14 days post ash fall in Barbados. And over here, you can see based on the visual data collected by the underwater robot, and in combination with AI and deep machine learning this graph that was created. This essentially shows a reef metric of a specific number which was indicated that there was no impact of the ash fall from last year for volcanic eruption in Saint Vincent on this specific reef location in Barbados. As I said, this is just one potential application, but we're also seeing a lot of interest in using this for virtual reality or entertainment or research for meditation. For example, so really, you know, we're excited that this innovation is collecting very accurate data very quickly and could potentially lead to the democratization of underwater data and information, which really leads into how we at the lab are using blue bots for our digital experiment, which is a four portal ecosystem, which caters up for key different groups of stakeholders, fisher folk and blue fish government in blue data, individual consumers in blue trace and the private sector, tourism sector in blue seal. And we hope that this Caribbean asset pool for marine conservation and restoration is just one little beginning step of what this can do and how artificial intelligence for a digital blue planet can empower individuals and communities who are, you know, living this every day and being impacted to have a greater voice and to inform decision making know we're sharing and exchanging knowledge and skills to be able to access this digital blue planet and digital twins to really revolutionize access to marine data in the eastern Caribbean region. So as we continue to scale this throughout the eastern Caribbean region and also in parallel to small island developing states says we hope that you will continue to join us on our journey as we learn more about artificial intelligence for a digital blue planet. Thanks so much, Nicola for your presentation and some really interesting ideas are exploring there with, especially I was interested in your creative ideas about using footage from mediation and also learning tools as well I think we can look at some very technical aspects can't not be like identifying fish and things but maybe there are people that don't have access to that media or knowledge of the degradation that's going on on the reefs. And so, perhaps that's a very good tool for doing that. I have a question for you which is, what sorts of stakeholder integration and we've been doing with the blue box projects. So thanks. Thanks, Matt, for your question and for including me in this. I think so far what we've been doing is a big part of the accelerator lab in Barbados in the eastern Caribbean is to work on the ground at the grassroots level so we have been trying with blue box specifically trying to train individuals within the communities to actually be able to to pilot the robot and learn how to analyze some of the information and then with regards to Fisher folk and that group of stakeholders we've also been engaging with many of them to support identification of some of the fish species because as I started to the one of the last slides where we're using the information in the data collected to try to inform and train the algorithms to be able to identify fish species but unlike some of the other presentations that we've heard earlier today there's actually a huge challenge of data collection within the eastern Caribbean region. So we actually don't have a huge quantity of data being collected within this region on on specific elements so we are trying to collaborate with the Fisher folk to collect more data specifically on on some of the fish species and then we are collaborating as I said with many different innovators to try to analyze some of this information and to look at the applications of it, you know as you touched on there there's so many opportunities and applications of this innovation as, as I said and we're seeing in research you know VR a lot of tourism partners are interested in it or even individuals and then meditation you know you're having a hard day wherever you're sitting, you can just chin in and watch one of the videos of the robot diving and in Carl Alba and Barbados where there's seven relationship racks for example so lots of opportunities and trying to bring in everyone because as I said, what we're really trying to do here is marry the traditional or cultural knowledge with the science to inform innovation, and we realize that we can't really do one without the other. Thank you very much, Nicola just reminded me that FAO's fish finder program is putting out an old style PDF guide later this year, which relies on the kind of old style of presenting information and you've taken it right to the other end where you've got automated underwater vehicles collecting and analyzing data so there's a lot happening and it's good to see that it's happening in the Caribbean region. Thanks very much.