Design Challenge and Design Ideas

Currently, there’s no way to measure flora, fauna and funga simultaneously in near real-time and access contextual insights. Existing offerings provide static metrics that do not equip leaders to make holistic and informed decisions.

Business, regulatory and social imperatives are driving the emergence of biodiversity as a leading priority for organizations. Companies that wish to sustain themselves must be led through the adoption of science-based business targets.

Half of Fortune 500 companies recognize biodiversity loss. Yet only 5% have an operational plan to address the issue. To close this intention to action gap, data, insights and expertise is needed to drive change.

We set about developing a solution that sits at the intersection of strategic design, technology and behavioural science to empower users with timely, contextual insights and drive action. Biodev addresses Sustainable Development Goals including Sustainable Cities and Communities, Industry Innovation and Production, and Life on Land.

How the brief was fulfilled

The research question we’re solving for is “How can we help organisations to track influence on nature and biodiversity loss to achieve a nature-positive impact?”.

The solution developed is a proprietary asset that provides actionable insights for key users, including Executive Leaders, Sustainability/Risk Managers, and external partners. We partnered with world leaders in biodiversity data including The Centre for Biodiversity Genomics Data, Rainforest Connection, Open Cosmos and Planet. These data sources are aggregated with site-specific organisational data, business operations and relevant first-party data to ensure Biodev provides timely, accurate and insightful information.

The first stage is to identify a site or sites we will monitor and conduct a needs assessment to ensure we’re set up for success. We then frame the challenge, user needs and identify interventions. Next, we start to aggregate and analyse the data creating a holistic view of the site. The data model then returns specific information against metrics we are trying to track. The data model then returns specific information against metrics we are trying to track and this is displayed in the form of screens and dashboards organisations have access to.

Generative AI models provide insights relating to performance, impact, dependencies and other activity which we use to formulate action plans mapped to organisational goals and needs.

The last piece of the puzzle is the advisory services. Given the specialised subject matter, we are collaborating with our data partners, platform partners and NGOs to build on insights that Biodev returns and guide organisations towards regenerative business practices.

At Accenture the Dock, we carefully combined diverse skillsets and design disciplines. Research and commercial strategy to determine product, market fit and a viable go-to-market strategy. Technology and Data to evaluate the data partners, ensure data quality, and integrate the data sets with the user interface. Strategic and Systems Thinking to generate a holistic view of the biodiversity ecosystem, identify interventions and clearly demonstrate where Biodev adds value. Behavioural Science research to ensure the dashboard and insights were impactful for users and drove action. Interaction Design to build and test a desirable, engaging and intuitive user experience.

Collaborative Design

We partnered with four data partners to build and test Biodev. Centre for Biodiversity Genomics, Open Cosmos, Rainforest Connect and Planet. The primary role of each partner was to share data sets and support with developing the process of data integration and analysis.

Centre for Biodiversity Genomics:
The Centre for Biodiversity Genomics is a national research facility based at the University of Guelph, Canada. Through DNA – based technologies it has developed world-leading capabilities in DNA sequencing, informatics, and digital imaging, allowing it to support and coordinate the major research programs undertaken by the International Barcode of Life Consortium.

Open Cosmos:
Open Cosmos, design, manufacture, launch and operate low earth orbit satellites with the purpose of simplifying access to space using small satellites, to ensure that a greater number of organisations all over the world could benefit from the richness of satellite data to address their challenges.

Rainforest Connection:
Rainforest Connection (RFCx) builds and deploys scalable, open acoustic monitoring systems that can halt illegal logging and poaching, and can enable biodiversity measurement and monitoring.

Planet:
Planet provides the highest frequency satellite data to make change visible, accessible, and actionable.

Amazon:
AWS web services provides tailored storage and cloud computing to optimise efficiency, safety and costs.