About the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences (RBINS)

RBINS is a prominent scientific institution in Belgium dedicated to the study of natural sciences. Located in Brussels, the institute encompasses a renowned museum and active research facilities. The museum is celebrated for housing the largest Dinosaur Gallery in Europe, featuring the famous Bernissart Iguanodons. Beyond its exhibitions, RBINS conducts extensive research in areas such as biodiversity, ecosystems, and geology, contributing valuable scientific expertise to both national and international environmental policies.

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About Crunch Analytics

Founded in 2016, Crunch Analytics is a Belgian data and AI consultancy that helps businesses harness data science, machine learning, and AI to drive smarter decision-making. Specializing in retail, e-commerce, and consumer goods, they develop tailored analytics solutions, optimize pricing strategies, and provide training to empower teams in using data effectively.

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About the project

The project consisted of images with different wavelengths of light, representing all kinds of algae and underwater plants in order to know which lifespecies is represented where and in what amount. The images were first captured by drones and labelled and then used as training set for the unlabelled satellite dataset which can cover much wider areas. Training on drone data and evaluating on satellite data brought some major hurdles along the way. One of the main issues were very unbalanced classes and trying to work around an image consisting of multiple layered wavelengths, each one providing more detail about the underwater life. Weighting the training data and using multilayered CNNs resulted in an accurate classification of the unseen satellite images.