EIEE Webinar – Seminar
, 12:00 CEST
To join the webinar, register here
Speaker
Lily Xu, Postdoc at Oxford
Abstract
Wildlife poaching pushes countless species to the brink of extinction, with animal population sizes declining by an average of 70% since 1970. To aid rangers in preventing poaching in protected areas around the world, we have developed a machine learning system to predict poaching hotspots and plan ranger patrols. In this talk, we present technical advances in multi-armed bandits, robust reinforcement learning, and causal inference, guided by research questions that emerged from on-the-ground challenges in deploying this system. We also discuss bridging the gap between research and practice, from field tests in Cambodia and Uganda to large-scale deployment through integration with SMART, the leading platform for protected area management used by over 1,200 wildlife parks worldwide.