A Night at the Museum
Last night Naaut was invited to attend a very special event to hear about the partnership between London’s Natural History Museum and Amazon Web Services (AWS). We learned about the ways in which AWS is working with NHM to help transform the Museum’s scientific research and community science capabilities by bringing together a broad range of UK biodiversity and environmental data types in one place for the first time.
The collaboration between AWS and Natural History Museum will focus on the creation of a ‘digital twin’ for UK’s biodiversity. In my work DiRAC — HPC I have been exposed to science model-backed surrogate models versus ‘digital twins’ which we are increasingly hearing about across all sectors. AWS’s and Natural History Museum’s collaboration to create a ‘digital twin’ for UK’s biodiversity. Essentially, a data platform that will store, enrich, and compare biodiversity and environmental data and support innovative solutions for our planet.
Hearing from Dr Douglas Gurr, the Director of the Natural History Museum “We are also a serious scientific research institute. Hidden behind these walls through over 350 full time academic scientists. Over 170 PhD students working on these topics find that biodiversity” and I discovered that the partnership thrives based on AWS concept of longterm thinking and he went on to say “the slightly scary fact is that every single piece of data we look at, tells us we’re heading for sixth mass extinction” — that takes a second to sink in no matter how many times we hear it.
He went on to say that this is a nation's first digital twin on biodiversity as the UK will become “the first country in the world to create a digital twin of our national biodiversity”
“If we can get volunteers and kids out there making observations of scientific grade it will give us an extraordinary picture of what’s really going on. If we understand what’s going on, we can find a solution to fix the biodiversity crisis”
The organisations will develop a new data platform, the Data Ecosystem, which will be built using AWS technologies. By building the Data Ecosystem on the AWS Cloud, the Museum can capture, store, combine and compare data in a secure, resilient, and scalable way.
I love how my worlds of space, innovation, technology, and supercomputing via the work I do at DiRAC HPC Facility converge.
Having access to events like this allows me to have a platform to speak about the interesting goings-on in the UK Space community. Like the upcoming satellite launches from Spaceport Cornwall with Virgin Orbit. Putting Welsh space companies like Space Forge on the map!
Through my work with Naaut, I aim to be the connector - cross-pollinating the work and advancements in the space sector across the vibrant global technology ecosystem. And all the while I get to sit in the UK’s national supercomputing infrastructure at a time where the ‘Future of Compute’ continues to be delved into from the grassroots to universities, industry, and government departments like DCMS and BEIS I continue to be challenged and thrive in all the undefined spaces Naaut sits in.
