To make truly effective use of the explosion in the availability of environmentally related data requires matching high-level technical expertise in data science and AI needed to exploit massive, novel, datasets with environmental knowledge. Jointly with the UoE-Met Office Joint Centre for Excellence in Environmental Intelligence, Theme X1 will act as the core ‘technical engine’ of RENEW, integrating data science and AI capability within the different themes and providing a computational ecosystem that will enable data integration and advanced data science and AI methodologies to be applied at scale.

Working with the other themes, new methodologies will be developed to support specific questions within RENEW with methods for implementation that will allow innovative analytics to be performed at a scale and speed that has not previously been possible. The computational ecosystem will also act as a host for web-based dashboards, tools and apps. It will facilitate the co-development, with themes, partners and stakeholders, of bespoke tools and datasets together with accessible interfaces, apps and dashboards. The result will be an interactive ‘Biodiversity dashboard’ containing a suite of visualisation tools that will provide a unified route to data, information, and RENEW research in a form that can feed directly into decision-making processes to inform business and investment decisions that impact UK biodiversity, particularly those that affect land-use.