AI is helping when counting puffins is not black and white

The company sees sustainability as a top priority and is working with Microsoft to identify, develop and deploy innovative solutions aligned to joint zero-carbon ambitions. The pair will look to collaborate, share knowledge and develop potential initiatives to drive operational efficiency through renewable energy, decarbonisation and digital solutions.

In the meantime, the work being done on the Isle of May to spot, recognise and count puffins using technology could help minimise disruption to birds' breeding and feeding habits as those sustainability projects move forward.

"As the investment in renewable energy continues, it's ever more important to ensure that developments, like windfarms, are not having any detrimental environmental effects," said Simon Turner, CTO of Data and AI at Avanade. "This particular area on the Isle of May attracts many puffins each year to breed and it's key to ensure that with the planning of any new windfarms this is not interrupted. To monitor the puffin population on the island, NatureScot would normally send people with clipboards to sit for hours, marking down how many puffins they saw. With SSE Renewables, we saw an opportunity to use technology to make this process more accurate, more efficient and less invasive for the puffins. Using cameras and AI, we are now able to count the number of puffins and monitor their burrows all day, every day, without going near them."

SSE Renewables and Avanade have placed four cameras in stainless steel boxes on the island to capture live footage of the puffins, after they begin their return to land to breed in late-March/early-April following eight months at sea. They will make the island their home for the spring and summer months - using the same burrows as previous years - before returning to the sea in mid-August.

Each box has a condensation heater, wipers to cope with the miserable or "dreich" weather (as the Scots call it) and a backup power supply. The data captured by the cameras is stored in a Microsoft Azure Data Lake and uses the Azure Kubernetes Service, which has the power and elasticity to handle huge amounts of information.

Clare Barclay, Chief Executive Officer at Microsoft UK, said: "SSE and Microsoft hold the joint ambition to prioritise, enhance and support sustainability in the energy sector. We are proud to be working closely together through our partnership to achieve these goals in the short, medium and long term. The innovative puffin monitoring project on the Isle of May demonstrates the impact technology can have on advancing sustainability and is just one initial example of how we are collaborating with SSE to shape a more sustainable future."