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DiSSCo UK is using AI and robotic scanning to put natural history collections online, with work starting on smaller specimens in Wales and Scotland.
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The project, called DiSSCo UK, involves 100 museums, botanic gardens, universities and other organisations. Its opening phase begins in Wales and Scotland, concentrating on smaller specimens such as insects, pressed flowers and ferns rather than whales or dinosaurs. In Cardiff, the team plans to scan around half a million insect and plant specimens. [1]
Some specimens can already be searched online, but they make up only a fraction of UK collections. The project’s goal is eventual online access to around 70 million animals, plants, fossils and rocks. [1]
Sarah Addezio, DiSSCo UK’s programme delivery director, told BBC News that the team estimates robots and AI could reduce a digitisation task that would take hundreds of years by hand to about a decade. The Arts and Humanities Research Council is funding the project. [1]
Dr Vincent Smith, a research leader at the Natural History Museum, expects the combined collections to help scientists study past environmental change and anticipate what might happen next. [1]
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