Our AI for Sustainability theme aims to explore the transformative potential of artificial intelligence (AI) in addressing the world’s most pressing environmental challenges, including climate change, biodiversity loss, and water resource management. These interconnected issues require innovative solutions, and AI offers new possibilities to tackle them at scale.
While traditional methods have provided valuable insights, the complexity of environmental systems demands more advanced tools. AI has already been applied in specific areas such as weather prediction, natural hazard monitoring, and water usage optimisation. However, these applications tend to be narrow in focus, limiting their broader impact on sustainability.
The emergence of Foundation AI presents a game-changing opportunity for environmental science. These large-scale, pre-trained AI models can analyse vast datasets and adapt to a wide range of tasks, offering the potential to uncover patterns across environmental systems, improve predictions, and support evidence-based decision-making.
Our research brings together experts from various disciplines to explore the opportunities and challenges of using AI for sustainability. By collaborating with stakeholders across sectors, we aim to develop the next generation of AI systems that can address environmental challenges, while ensuring that ethical and safety considerations are met.
Meet our BISCA Affiliates who are working within this theme.
Associate Professor in Resilience Engineering
Xilin Xia is a computational modeller of natural hazards, (floods and landslides and their impacts), covering computational hydraulics, high-performance computing, machine learning and natural hazard resilience.
Assistant Professor in Sociology and Social Policy
Dr Justyna Bandola-Gill is exploring the evolving paradigms of evidence-based policymaking in the face of emerging governing technologies, particularly AI.
Professor of Environmental Nanosciences
Professor Iseult Lynch is an environmental chemist working at the interface of chemical (and materials) pollution and environmental policy.
Associate Professor in Procurement and Operations Management
Gu Pang is a Senior Lecturer in Procurement and Operations Management at Birmingham Business School, University of Birmingham.
Assistant Professor in Railway Systems Engineering
Staff profile for Dr Ning Zhao,Assistant Professor in Railway Systems Engineering for BCRRE
Assistant Professor in Energy Systems
Profile of Dr Weiqi Hua, Electronic, Electrical and Systems Engineering, University of Birmingham
MTC Chair in Sustainable Manufacturing
Professor Butler is currently the MTC Chair in Sustainable Manufacturing and lead the Sustainable Manufacturing Group within the School of Engineering, University of Birmingham.
Chair in Data Science and Government
Slava Jankin specialises in computational approaches to governance and society, focusing on how ai can transform public institutions and address complex societal challenges.
