At Smart Parks, our commitment to wildlife conservation is powered by strategic collaborations with technology providers. These partnerships are essential for driving innovation and creating impactful solutions that protect wildlife and preserve natural habitats. By working together with a diverse network of experts and organizations, Smart Parks leverages collective knowledge and resources to pioneer advancements in conservation technology, ultimately making a tangible difference for ecosystems and communities worldwide.
Synergizing Expertise for Comprehensive Solutions
Our collaborations with technology providers specializing in AI, sensor technology, satellite imaging, and data analytics enable us to harness cutting-edge tools for wildlife protection. For example, we partner with AI companies to develop sophisticated algorithms that enhance species monitoring and behavior analysis. By teaming up with sensor manufacturers, we deploy innovative devices that gather real-time environmental data crucial for effective conservation management. These synergies allow us to empower park rangers and conservationists with actionable insights, strengthening our ability to combat poaching and safeguard biodiversity.
Accelerating Adoption and Impact
Through strategic partnerships, Smart Parks accelerates the adoption of emerging technologies in wildlife conservation. By collaborating with leading providers, we seamlessly integrate their solutions into our conservation projects, maximizing efficiency and impact. For instance, our collaborations with companies specializing in wireless sensor network technology like LoRaWAN enable us to deploy robust networks of sensors across protected areas. These sensors collect and transmit vital data on wildlife movements, habitat conditions, and threats, providing valuable intelligence for informed conservation decision-making.
Driving Positive Change for Nature and Communities
Our collaborations extend beyond technology, fostering positive change for nature and local communities. By working together with like-minded organizations, we develop inclusive solutions that benefit wildlife conservation while respecting indigenous knowledge and community needs. For instance, partnerships with community-based organizations empower local stakeholders to actively participate in conservation efforts. Through these collaborations, Smart Parks strives to build a future where technology serves as a catalyst for sustainable development, ensuring that wildlife thrives alongside human populations.
Current Collaborations
Smart Parks is actively engaged in multiple collaborations with leading technology providers. These partnerships include projects with AI startups to develop advanced wildlife monitoring systems, collaborations with satellite imaging companies to enhance spatial analytics, and initiatives with conservation NGOs to deploy integrated solutions in key biodiversity hotspots. By pursuing these collaborations, Smart Parks expands its impact and drives meaningful change in wildlife conservation through innovative technological solutions.
Dessert Lion Conservation Trust
Together with the Desert Lion Conservation trust we are working on the most rugged OpenCollar tracker ever produced. The Desert Lion Conservation trust has been deploying tracking collars for decades and has shared key insights about what works and what does not work. We are currently close to producing the first working prototype. This time the focus is not on adding very specialized firmware features (although it has all the current advance firmware features the Edge platform can offer), but we rather focus on making it extremely durable and still relatively easy to produce in series. We are grateful to lean heavily on the knowledge and experience from the NamTag team and with this effort we hope to carry on their important work to protect what we love.
Hack the Planet
Many times we have joined forces with our Dutch friends Tim and Thijs from Hack the Planet. We share share the same passion and drive to make technolgy work for conservation. Currently we are actively developing and deploying the ScannerEdge solution, which is a specialized devices to detect poachers in remote areas. Bringing years of development from the Hack the Planet team together with the OpenCollar Edge devices has pushed this solution from prototype to a fully working and scalable solution in no-time. This means more protected areas can we fitted with this solution and therefore more wildlife is protecting thanks to the collaboration. We are confident that this partnership will bring more impact in the near future.
Addax Data Science
The collaboration with Peter van Lunteren from Addax Data Science is still fresh, but already shows clear signs of a long and fruitful journey of impact together. It is even more special because this collaboration is also directly tapping into our other mentioned collaboration with the Desert Lion Foundation and Hack the Planet. It all started with the enhancement and use of EcoAssist to build and use custom AI species identification model for use in the Namibian desert. Only a few month later the improved EcoAssits is used by an increasing amount of people and organisation across the globe. Next to this, we have started to experiment with 4G connected camera traps, to make a “real-time” EcoAssits service, which turns out to be extremely useful in many projects. We are also looking into option to use low power edge computing to run small classification models close to the camera. It clearly helps to share a workspace in Utrecht, the place where Smart Parks has its workshop.
Rompa Group
We are extremely happy to have a close collaboration with Rompa Group, our global partner in plastic injection moulding. With their help we have developed the RangerEdge enclosure to near perfection. It now protects rangers and wildlife in many remote protected areas across the globe. We enjoy the commitment from the global Rompa team, including the design help from their teams in Australia, China and the Netherlands. Most recently we have managed to collaborate on some minor modifications to produce the ScannerEdge enclosure in collaboration with the Hack the Planet team. Again, this shows the commitment of the amazing team.
Chirpstack + RAKwireless
We could have made a separate post about our collaboration with Orne Brocaar from Chirpstack, however this collaboration with RAKwireless is a testimonial to the power of multi actor collaboration. Within weeks we have managed to setup this powerful combination of partners to tackle a prominent issue on the deployment of LoRaWAN network in remote areas. While deploying LoRaWAN gateways is a breeze compared to many other technologies, building IP back-hauls to connect these gateway to a central server can still be a major hurdle. Together we have developed a Relay protocol that enabled the use of “Relays Gateways”. These “Relay Gateways” run autonomously on solar and therefore can extend the coverage of LoRaWAN network with much more ease. The official “Relay” solution from the LoRaWAN Alliance indicated with “TS011” did not deliver what we had expexted from such a solution. Therefore we all agreed on following a different approach that is more suited for the remote areas we operate in. If all works well we may even ask the LoRaWAN Alliance to adopt it into the official standard. We like this collaboration not only for the huge impact is makes in conservation, but also for the openness. Both Chirpstack and RAKwireless are very good in giving back to the community.
FreeNature
With our mission to protect wildlife across the globe we want to ensure this also happens close to what we call home. The collaboration with FreeNature has surely made this possible. FreeNature is taking care of natural grazing projects all across the Netherlands, including species like European Bison, Water buffalo and several wild horse species. Like Smart Parks, the FreeNature team is highly passionate about wildlife. This makes make working together on projects almost easy. With the help of Tanje de Bode, we have developed and deployed the first non-collar wild horse tracking devices to ensure wild horses can be monitored without the use of collars. Also, with the help of Arjen Boerman we have managed to make crucial changes to to improve the WisenEdge tracking units. We are confident that this collaboration drives innovation in wildlife conservation in the Netherlands.
Peace Park Foundation
Collaboration is at the core of our partner Peace Parks Foundation. Over the past few years we have tirelessly combined our forces to combat Rhino poaching in Africa. Developing an advanced and specialized technological solution like the RhinoEdge is only possible with commitment to go as far as needed. We are happy to see that this collaboration has produced the most advance portfolio of RhinoEdge horn implants to assist in the monitoring and protection of Rhino across Africa. People like Colette, Herman, Brennan, Des and Phumlani have made this collaboration work. Much works has been done, but the fight is not over and together we will continue until there is no more rhino poaching.
Dijkman Elektrotechniek
Building reliable communication infrastructure in remote areas comes with special requirement. Not only the components need to be able to cope with harsh conditions while in operation. These components also need to be convenient to handle during transport and deployment. Our collaboration with Dijkman Elektrotechniek ensures that the Smart Parks team has access to a wide selection of components to meet these requirement. Building infrastructures that have a lasting impact.
