Aside from gathering and analysing many terabytes of data this year, we have also decided to re-brand Carbon Rewild as Bioacoustiq.
But don’t worry this is just a simple rebrand, nothing else about the business will change: same team, same ownership, same methods, same everything, just a change of name.
After half a decade of Carbon Rewild we thought the business needed a bit of a spruce up to reflect the demands of an ever changing and ever growing market.
Story So Far
Back in 2020 we wanted to build a business that made a positive contribution to the natural world. This would utilise our combined skills of product development, research, technical sales, and data analysis honed over the previous decade.
It was quickly clear that our goal should be to improve the measurement and reporting of nature. We knew that in order to have maximal impact we needed a technology that was: scalable, repeatable and cost-effective.
Bioacoustics fit that bill well.
So we focused our attention on offering an end-to-end bioacoustics service. If we shipped out an easy to use recorder our service could be both scalable (since anyone can put up the recorders) and repeatable (since the same recorder setup and analysis process are used each time). Then it was up to us to design a system that would make it cost effective.
So by early 2022 we were ready to launch and have fortunately been steadily growing ever since.
But Why Carbon Rewild In The First Place?
Even before we decided on Carbon Rewild our aim was to improve the measurement nature by leveraging accessible bioacoustic technology and bringing in other technologies to compliment the bioacoustics.
At the time carbon reporting was the dominant force in nature financing and biodiversity monitoring was less so. But we saw them as one of the same. Carbon sequestration should beget nature restoration and nature restoration should beget carbon sequestration.
Hence Carbon Rewild.
So Why Bioacoustiq?
Two reasons really.
Firstly nature restoration has evolved, from carbon as the main focus to a range of nature services in which biodiversity monitoring and restoration are prominent parts.
Secondly, as stated above our original mission was to improve the measurement and reporting of nature. Although we set out to explore complimentary technologies we have now very confidently nailed our colours to the mast of bioacoustics.
And as such the name Carbon Rewild is less applicable and potentially confusing.
In fact we’ve so well nailed our colours to the mast that all our current R&D involves pushing bioacoustics to its limit (more on that below) and we see plenty of mileage in the technology well into the future.
Therefore, we decided to go from a very vague name to a highly specific one: Bioacoustiq.
What Next For Bioacoustiq?
As a business we see it there are two main avenues to explore and grow:
- Greater uptake and recognition of bioacoustics as a critical measurement method for biodiversity monitoring. This means expanding bioacoustics beyond its comfort zone by expanding into new uses and markets.
- Keep challenging the technology and bringing new innovations to market. We believe we have only scratched the surface of what insights you can get from the audio data of nature. There are plenty of more avenues to explore for example: behavioural analysis; acoustic mapping and triangulation; abundance measurements; and hardware upgrades.
New Product Structure
From nearly 7 years of experience in developing bioacoustic technology and services we believe there is also a more logical way to deliver our service. In the beginning, we set out to provide an end-to-end service which encompassed shipping out recording equipment to performing the analysis and delivering a report. And that is something we will continue to offer.
However, not everyone needs the full end-to-end service which is packaged neatly into one product. So we have broken the process down. This will enable some users to access parts of the process to best suit their needs.
For example, some customers may only need data analysis and nothing else, others may need analysis, data visualisation, and archiving.
Bioacoustiq Survey – Data Gathering
This service is essentially our existing end-to-end service whereby we ship our custom audio recorders to our customers. These easy to use recorders allow users to set them up themselves and avoid the cost of owning and maintaining expensive equipment.
Once the survey is complete the user takes down the recorders and repackages them before we arrange for a courier to collect them.
Bioacoustiq Intelligence – Data Analysis
This is where the magic happens and months of audio recording is analysed for bird and bat vocalisations.
With this new structure it will allow users to submit their own data to be analysed using our existing analysis processes. This crucially involves human-in-the-loop verification alongside AI analysis.
It also allows external users to access our specialist classifiers such as the song/call classifier.
Bioacoustiq Core – Data Visualisation
Core is our data platform where you can view your results in more detail. Although we also present the results in a PDF format, there is only so much you can do with a static document.
Core allows users to take a deep dive into the various survey locations and interrogate them individually or as a whole. It is also the place where you can see long term trends in biodiversity health as more and more data is added to the platform.
Bioacoustiq Archive – Data Storage
We understand that many of our customers require their data to be securely stored for many years – if not decades!
In fact many projects now require all monitoring data to be stored for a long time. This includes the raw data which can be multiple terabytes of data per year. As a result we developed Bioacoustiq Archive to allow users to store (effectively) as much data in the UK as they’d like for multiple decades without relying solely on the major cloud computing players.
The major benefit of this service is that we already have your data to hand. Therefore, there is no need to re-upload the data to a different provider.
So we hope you like the new name and we look forward to keeping you updated with the progress in bioacoustics at Bioacoustiq!