Government unveils seven winners in latest natural capital assessment competition

Innovate UK and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) have unveiled seven winners who will share a pot of £1.3m in the second round of the Natural Capital and Ecosystem Assessment programme.

The second round projects were for “the development of complete end-to-end marine monitoring systems and their verification and validation.”

The Rt Hon Lord Benyon, Minister of State (Climate, Environment and Energy), pledged that the funding will “support game-changing technological innovations that will help in the end-to-end monitoring of one of the UK’s most vital natural assets.”

The projects and their funding winners:

Maximising seagrass regeneration through advanced artificial intelligence mapping and ultra-low-carbon solutions.

Winner: Unmanned Survey Solutions, Geoacoustics and Acua Ocean.

End-to-end marine monitoring solution for capturing and sharing environmental data to support marine net gain.

Winner: Plant Ecology Beyond Land CIC, Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult and Oceanos Earth.

An automated end-to-end eDNA-based marine biodiversity and species monitoring system.

Winner: Platform Kinetics, and Intuitiq.

Renewably powered micro-vessels for an end-to-end biodiversity monitoring system.

Winner: Oshen.

Seagrass observation using novel acoustic remote sensing.

Winner: HydroSurv Unmanned Survey (UK).

AlgaRover: macroalgal aquaculture marine biodiversity observation artificial intelligence rover.

Winner: Seaweed Generation, South West Mull and Iona Development and Algapelago Marine.

High-speed drone constellation for real-time monitoring of marine ecosystems.

Winner: Marble Aerospace.