Full Breakdown
AI-Driven Digitisation of UK Natural History Collections
By Drooid · · How we work
Core Initiative: Building a Digital Museum
Researchers across the United Kingdom are employing artificial intelligence and robotics to scan and analyse millions of specimens held in natural history collections. The effort, funded by the UK Research and Innovation Agency, aims to create the Distributed System of Scientific Collections, external (DiSSCo UK), a digital museum that will eventually allow the public to view around 70 million animals, plants, fossils and rocks via smartphones or computers. By automating the imaging process, the project compresses a task that previously required centuries into roughly a decade.
Key Institutions and Funding
The initial searchable material comes from a handful of large institutions, notably the Natural History Museum and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. New funding will open drawers and cupboards in museums, universities and regional repositories across the country, expanding the digital catalogue to include millions more specimens. Dr Joanna Dunster, associate director of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) within UKRI, oversees the programme’s public-access mandate.
Scale and Technology
DiSSCo UK targets a total of about 70 million digitised items, ranging from the blind tripod fish that perches on the seafloor to a horse tooth recovered by Charles Darwin in 1833 from northeast Argentina. Robots equipped with high-resolution cameras capture three-dimensional images, while AI algorithms label taxonomy, provenance and condition data, dramatically accelerating the cataloguing workflow.
Official Statements & Responses
Dunster emphasises the need for open accessibility, arguing that collections should not remain hidden in storage. She notes that the resource will serve both researchers seeking to track climate change, food-supply shifts and species loss, and families eager to explore natural history together. The platform is intended to be freely available to the public, fostering education and citizen-science participation.
Verbatim Quotes
- “We need to make these collections openly accessible instead of sitting where they can rarely be reached,” — Dunster