This week, COP17, the United Nations Biodiversity Conference, takes place under the theme ‘Taking Action for Biodiversity’. The conference marks a crucial midpoint in global efforts to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030. The urgency is clear: human activity is driving an alarming decline in biodiversity worldwide, posing major risks to our food supply, climate and living environment. Rapid urban expansion has long been one of the leading causes of habitat loss. Yet we still know surprisingly little about exactly how this ecological decline unfolds in cities and how we can reverse it.
To halt this decline, cities such as Amsterdam are exploring how urban green space can be designed differently to support biodiversity.
Insects as an Indicator
To determine whether green initiatives, such as green roofs, rain gardens and neighborhood parks, genuinely enhance biodiversity rather than simply improve human comfort, researchers from AMS Institute and MIT Senseable City Lab are turning to insects.
Insects account for approximately 70 percent of all terrestrial animal species and perform crucial functions: they pollinate urban plants, maintain healthy soils and form the foundation of the food chain for birds, bats and other mammals. Because insects respond extremely quickly to local changes in microclimate, such as drought and heatwaves, their numbers, activity levels and species diversity provide a valuable indicator of the health of urban nature.
From Snapshots to Continuous Insights
Until now, urban biodiversity has been measured through manual counts conducted on a limited number of days each year. As a result, the effects of weather and long-term trends in insect activity have remained largely invisible. The Sensing Garden project bridges this data gap with an affordable, smart camera sensor called “Flik.”
The sensor uses built-in AI to automatically identify and count insects throughout the day, while its hardware simultaneously records temperature, humidity and air quality. The first results providing insight into the state of biodiversity in Amsterdam are expected by the end of 2027.
“By measuring continuously, we are discovering patterns in biodiversity that have remained completely invisible until now, for example, during initial tests in Amsterdam, London (UK) and Laval (Canada), we observed that even a small increase in wind speed can cause insect activity to decline dramatically.”
Titus Venverloo
Lead, MIT Senseable City Lab Amsterdam & Program Developer
International Recognition and Global Action
In recognition of this innovative approach, the project has been awarded the MIT Prize for Open Data 2026, presented on 20 October 2026 to Åse Håtveit, project lead and researcher at MIT in Boston, USA.
All hardware designs, AI models and data will be shared fully open source. This will enable cities around the world to adopt the technology directly and adapt it to their own local insect species, supporting evidence-based action to protect and enhance urban nature.
