Restor, part of ETH BiodivX, Wins Bonus Prize in XPRIZE Rainforest Competition

Update on 24 Jan 2025 (original post was published on June 27, 2024):
The ETH BioDivX has won the prestigious bonus prize worth a quarter million USD in XPRIZE Rainforest competition. In an inspiring move, the team will be donating their entire XPRIZE Rainforest Impact Prize for co-designing an endowment fund with Indigenous communities. This fund will support future generations of Indigenous Scientists and Bridge Builders, connecting the Amazon rainforest to Western science. Announced in late 2024, this achievement felt like a true Christmas gift—a celebration of collaboration, innovation, and hope for the future of biodiversity.

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Restor, part of ETH BiodivX, is a XPRIZE Rainforest Finalist

Who doesn’t love a good rainforest success story? Restor is thrilled to announce that, as a member of ETH BiodivX, it has qualified as a finalist in the $10M XPRIZE Rainforest Competition using cutting-edge technology, community engagement, and innovative scientific research to understand rainforest biodiversity. This five-year competition, organized by XPRIZE Foundation, promotes technological innovation in biodiversity research. 

Rainforests are home to thousands of species and carry a wealth of biodiversity. This competition couldn’t be more needed in the present crises. The ETH BiodivX team is at the forefront of this mission to protect and restore biodiversity, and Restor, a geospatial platform hosting the largest community-led restoration projects and an ETH Zürich spin-off, is proud to contribute to ETH BiodivX efforts as they advance to the final stage of the competition.

Restor and ETH BiodivX: Solving the technical and environmental challenges of our time

ETH BiodivX team is a powerhouse of brilliant minds, combining science, tech, and local knowledge to protect the Amazon rainforest. Using patented and modified drones, they’re collecting environmental DNA (eDNA), images, and sounds to uncover the secrets of biodiversity. But it doesn’t stop there—the data is analyzed using innovative “backpack labs” and paired with insights from local communities to paint a clearer picture of the rainforest.

Restor is pushing the boundaries of rainforest research by enhancing BiodivX's in-house algorithms to detect individual tree crowns in dense tropical forests—a notoriously tricky task.

Using drone imagery collected in the field, these advanced algorithms process data both on the Google Cloud Platform for high performance and offline when needed. Why does this matter? Identifying individual tree crowns unlocks insights like tree density maps, canopy spectral variability analyses, and other ecological data that deepen our understanding of rainforest ecosystems. It’s tech at its finest, working for the future of biodiversity. 

Restor has also shared all public data layers for scientific analysis including carbon, biodiversity, land cover, water, and environment for the finalists to use during the last step of the competition expected to take place in July 2024. 

As the largest collection of community-led nature restoration projects, we’re uniquely positioned to provide researchers with near real-time biodiversity insights. These insights drive real, immediate action and empower the true stewards of restoration: Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities.

What’s the final challenge

All six finalist teams will have 24 hours to survey biodiversity in a remote area of tropical rainforest, followed by 48 hours to produce the most impactful real-time insights. The winning team will demonstrate the scalability of their technology and maximize performance on biodiversity surveying and producing insights to meet the prize criteria and effectively disrupt the current biodiversity assessment landscape.

The ETH BiodivX project exemplifies the power of interdisciplinary collaboration and innovative thinking. The team is making significant strides in advancing rainforest conservation through cutting-edge technology, community engagement, and scientific research. Restor supports BiodivX in this monumental event, hoping for an outcome that will leave a lasting impact on local communities and the global scientific community.