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Content by Lenovo + Intel© Callum Thompson, Lenovo Work For Humankind

Lenovo Gives Wildlife
Conservation an Edge

How Lenovo’s Work For Humankind project and anature conservation group created a one-of-a-kindedge-computing experiment at the edge of the world.

I’If you were stranded on a remotet s an age-old question:island, what would you bring?

For some of us, the answer might be a favorite book, or—for the
more practically minded—a water-filtration system or signalflares. For the conservationists working to save endangered
species and the fragile ecosystem on Robinson Crusoe Island,arguably the most remote island on Earth, it turns out that theanswer is Lenovo’s dg om u ing o u ion with AIcapabilities.
epe ctslts© Island Conserva iont

A Race Against TimeThe island—700 kilometers off the coast of Chile—is 50 square
kilometers of forests, volcanic mountains, and beaches. It’s also
home to several species of flora and fauna that cannot be foundanywhere else on the planet. But since humans began coming tothe island some 500 years ago, they have introduced invasive
species such as rats, coati, and goats. As a result, native species
such as the Juan Fernandez firecrown hummingbird and thePink-footed shearwater have reached the brink of extinction andthe island’s old-growth forests have died off.
In total, six bird species and 17 tree species are in grave danger. In
a race against time to save them, a group of conservationists has
partnered with Lenovo in its Work For Humankind project to use
technology to accelerate and supercharge their efforts to savethese species—as well as benefit the permanent inhabitants ofthe island.
Bridging the digital divide,Lenovo set up a first-of-its-kind
technology hub on the island—
packed with its highperformance smart devices for
productivity, connection, andcollaboration. What's more, thecompany has offset the carbon
emissions of these devices. 

The team is also using edge
computing and the Lenovo
ThinkEdge servers powered by© Island Conserva ion
3rd Gen Intel®Xeon®Scalable
processors with built-in AI acceleration. These edge servers
process huge amounts of data from cameras and sensors
throughout the island—powering conservation in the world’s
remotest locations.
tThough islands comprise only about 5% of the world’s
landmass, they possess approximately 20% of the world’sbiodiversity.
Because their ecosystems are so fragile, islands have become theepicenters of extinction. In fact, the overwhelming majority ofreptile, bird, amphibian, and mammal extinctions have occurred
on islands, and a staggering 86% of those recorded extinctions
have been caused by invasive species.

© Callum Thompson, Lenovo Work For Humankind

Nature Meets Technology

David Will has spent his career trying to change those numbers.
Will is the Head of Innovation at Island Conservation, anorganization that protects endangered species by removing
invasive species. Early on, he spent a year and a half on
California’s San Nicholas Island tracking invasive species.

“I can tell you, one of the most depressing things is waking up

every day and hoping you don't find a footprint of an animal inthe sand,” Will says, “because if you find it, it means you've got
another couple of months trying to chase it.”Will’s mission is to implement technological solutions to makecurbing invasive species more time- and cost-efficient. For years,Island Conservation had been working with the community ofRobinson Crusoe to remove invasive species when theorganization spearheaded an ambitious project of placing 70
wildlife cameras across the island to track the progress of theirremoval efforts.

© Callum Thompson, Lenovo Work For Humankind

Once every few weeks, volunteers would hike up to 13 hours tocollect the SD cards from the cameras. Then they would wait

weeks to send hard drives via plane or barge to a data center inSantiago, Chile, where the photos were analyzed.

“It's not so much the problem of ‘Is there a needle in a haystack?’
as the problem ‘Is there no needle in the haystack?’” Will says.
Missing a few invasive animals will almost inevitably lead to thespecies reestablishing themselves, sometimes in just a matter ofmonths.

But by the time Island Conservation staff could sort through andrefine the results, months would pass, rendering the data
virtually obsolete and making it impossible to act in real-time—
giving invasive rats and coatis the chance to repopulate.

“I didn't know that you could bring the power of a data center
to a particular edge location,” Will says.
But that changed when he met Charles Ferland, the ice
President and General Manager of Edge Computing at Lenovo.
V© Callum Thompson, Lenovo Work For Humankind

A utting dge artnership
C-EP

Ferland and his team are used to projects that push the limits ofcomputing in service of human good. For example, they areusing 5G technology to transform Barcelona into a mar i ou ur .
sthe ftt c tyfe

“ marter technology means helping our customers solve someof humanity's greatest challenges,” erland says. And solving
those challenges means the team is working, uite literally, atSFqthe edge.

Partnering with Island Conservation and the residents ofRobinson Crusoe Island was a natural fit. But the remote natureof the island and lack of digital infrastructure presented a newchallenge. Before its partnership with Lenovo, Robinson Crusoe
Island was, for all practical purposes, digitally isolated. The
approximately 1,000 residents of the island shared a 1-Mbps
internet connection, rendering it useless for Island Conservation’sefforts to analyze the staggering amounts of data collected fromcameras.
As part of its effort to redefine Work From
Home as Work For Humankind, Lenovo
donated and installed an island
workspace with a range of its powerfuldevices and solutions, including Lenovo
ThinkPad, ThinkBook, Legion, and oga
PCs Motorola edge smartphones
ThinkSmart collaboration devices
ThinkReality augmented reality smart
glasses, and more. Then volunteers wereinvited from around the world to take partin a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity—towork their day jobs completely remotelyusing Lenovo’s tech and then volunteer
their time and skills for the island’s
conservation effort. 

Y;;;In addition, Lenovo upgraded the island’sinternet to a 00-Mbps satelliteconnection. et even with the Island’s
upgraded internet connection, it wasimpractical to send massive amounts ofdata from all 70 high-definition cameras
to the cloud for analysis
2Y.

ela ed produ s used in heWork For Humankind ro e

Ferland’s team knew they needed to bringsupercomputing power toRobinson Crusoe Island, where the data was being created. But
installing a data center wasn’t a feasible solution because of theisland’s extreme temperatures and humidity. What’s more, thesalt in the ocean air would be extremely corrosive toconventional data centers.
Rt

ctt

Pjct

70

HIGH-DEFINITION CAMERAS

400,000

IMAGES PROCESSED PER DAY

200

Megabit-per-second 
satellite internet connection

418

MILES OFF THE COAST OF CHILE

Ruggedi ed ervers to the Rescuez

S

The solution was Lenovo’s T inkEdg SE450, an AI-optimizededge server with a rugged design capable of withstanding
extreme conditions while running quietly, allowing it to live
comfortably in the new remote workspace. Lenovo worked with
Island Conservation to tailor the server to its needs, adding
additional graphics cards to increase the AI processing capability
per node.
he“We took the supercomputer capability they had in antiago
and brought that into a form factor that is much smaller,” saysSerland.

FThe ThinkEdge SE450 eliminated the need for on-site
technicians. Unlike a data center, which needs staff on-site, theThinkEdge server could be monitored and serviced remotely byLenovo team members. It proved to be the perfect solution.
Lenovo’s ThinkEdge SE450 Edge Server allows conservationists
to process 4.8 images per second. That’s more than 400,000
photos per day. Then, only the most relevant images are sent via
the satellite internet connection to the mainland for furtheranalysis. Thanks to the Lenovo AI server powered by 3rd Gen
Intel®Xeon®Scalable processors, and boosted connectivity, theisland’s conservation projects are seeing efficiencies that include
a 100% jump in image-processing speed. Even in its initialstages, the collaboration has been a quantifiable success in thereal and substantial benefits it has shown.
But there is always room to improve. Currently, the AI algorithm
detects only the differences between flora and fauna, but withtime, it can be trained to detect specific types of invasive floraand fauna with much greater accuracy. In the future, there may
be opportunities to connect the cameras to a 5G network,
eliminating the need to manually gather the SD cards.

On the Bright Hori onz

For Will and the team at Island Conservation, Lenovo’s edge
computing solutions have opened a world of possibilities forconservation. But the promise of edge computing stretches farbeyond preserving fragile ecosystems. Lenovo’s ThinkEdge
servers are being used by doctors in remote locations andhumanitarian crisis zones to give them the same computing
power they would get from urban hospitals. They’re onboard theboats of fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico, who use the ThinkEdge
server’s AI capability to monitor catches, alerting them when afish is caught that is either endangered or too small to keep.

On Robinson Crusoe Island, recovering the biodiversity hasn’t

been easy, but implementing Lenovo’s technology resources has
given the effort a quantum leap forward. And once a single
species recovers, the effects can cascade—improving theecosystem “from ridge to reef,” as Will says.
FPO

Lenovo and the Lenovo logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Lenovo.
Intel, the Intel logo, and Xeon are trademarks of Intel Corporation or its
subsidiaries.

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