The plant identification app Flora Incognita, developed by TU Ilmenau and the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry Jena, has been awarded the Sonja Bernadotte Prize 2023. The jury paid particular tribute to the app's high scientific standards and its status as an interdisciplinary citizen science project.
The "Sonja Bernadotte Prize for Ways to Nature Education" is awarded annually by the German Horticultural Society 1822 e.V. (DGG) and is intended as an award for outstanding achievements for ways to nature education. The prize is intended to raise awareness of the importance of nature education and the experience of nature, to strengthen commitment to nature education and to provide financial support for efforts in this direction.
The Sonja Bernadotte Prize in 2023 will be awarded to the plant identification app Flora Incognita. The Board of Trustees based its decision on the fact that "Germany's most popular plant identification app is not only appreciated and used by millions of laypeople, but is now also used and recommended by botanists*." In the explanation for the selection, the high scientific standard and the significance as an interdisciplinary citizen science project were particularly emphasized.
It is an excellent example for the meaningful and profitable use of AI, for the democratization of knowledge and for modern 'ways of nature education', both in formal education of children, youth and students and for informal adult education.
Dr. Jana Wäldchen from the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry Jena and Prof. Patrick Mäder from the TU Ilmenau received the award on October 20, 2023 in Jüchen at Schloss Dyck.
About Flora Incognita
The Flora Incognita app was developed as a joint project of the TU Ilmenau and the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry Jena. It was funded from 2014 to 2020 by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and from 2014 to 2019 by the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation with funds from the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety and the Stiftung Naturschutz Thüringen. The Flora Incognita project was a research project for the implementation of the National Strategy on Biological Diversity.
The follow-up project "Flora Incognita++" is also a joint project of the TU Ilmenau and the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry Jena. It is funded by the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation with funds from the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection and by the Thuringian Ministry for the Environment, Energy and Nature Conservation.
Just this spring, Flora Incognita received a new artificial intelligence, which tripled the number of plant species that can be identified: Worldwide, thanks to the improved technological basis of self-learning deep neural networks, around 16,000 species can now be determined - even in offline mode.
Contact
Prof. Patrick Mäder
Head of the Data-intensive Systems and Visualization Group