A new collaboration between Vattenfall, Spoor AI, and the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) has demonstrated the potential of artificial intelligence to revolutionise seabird monitoring at offshore wind farms. The project, based at Aberdeen Bay Offshore Wind Farm, evaluated AI-powered camera systems’ ability to detect, track, and analyse bird movements around operational turbines, offering critical insights to enhance wildlife protection and renewable energy expansion.
Traditionally, offshore bird monitoring has been labour-intensive, weather-dependent, and often limited to discrete survey periods. The deployment of Spoor’s vision systems marks a significant advancement, enabling continuous, autonomous data collection across a range of environmental conditions with minimal human intervention.
The study tested two systems — a mono-vision setup and a stereo-vision setup, both paired with Spoor’s AI-powered video processing software. While the mono-vision system estimated bird distances based on assumed bird sizes, the stereo-vision system used two cameras to triangulate positions with greater precision, similar to human depth perception. This allowed the technology to capture finer-scale details of bird flight behaviour, including ‘micro-avoidance’, rapid, small-scale manoeuvres birds make to avoid turbine blades.
Key findings from the trial include:
- Accuracy: Stereo-vision provided significantly improved distance and size estimates compared to mono-vision, enhancing flight path tracking capabilities.
- Collision risk insights: The systems enabled documentation of bird flux, the number of birds moving through a monitored section of airspace, a critical metric for modelling potential collision risks.
- Operational robustness: Both systems demonstrated the ability to operate autonomously and continuously, supporting scalable monitoring offshore.
- Importantly, the trial confirmed that accurate measurement of bird movement patterns and avoidance behaviours can directly inform more refined collision risk models, ultimately supporting effective mitigation strategies at current and future offshore wind sites.
Philipp Boersch-Supan, Principal Ecological Statistician at BTO, praised the technology’s scalability and transparent evaluation process, stating: “Robust and scalable monitoring inside operating wind farms is needed for a nature-positive clean energy transition.” Jesper Kyed Larsen, Environmental R&D Coordinator at Vattenfall, emphasised the importance of understanding seabird interactions with offshore turbines, adding that these insights would strengthen the evidence base for collision risk assessments and mitigation measures.
Ask Helseth, Chief Executive of Spoor, welcomed the results, noting that AI-powered systems can deliver high-quality biodiversity monitoring data at scale, supporting better-informed decision-making alongside offshore wind development.
Overall, the project showcases how technological innovation can align renewable energy growth with the protection of biodiversity. By leveraging AI-driven monitoring solutions, the offshore wind industry can move closer to achieving both climate and conservation objectives.