Coral Reef Insight
Client
The World Wildlife Fund
Industry
Environment and Wildlife Conservation
Timeframe
6 weeks
The opportunity
Artificial intelligence is transforming how organisations collect, analyse and act on data. In reef conservation, tools like image recognition and predictive modelling already exist. But a gap remains between sophisticated technology and the communities who need it most.
WWF, in partnership with AIMS and GBRF, recognised an opportunity to explore how emerging LLM capabilities could bridge this gap. The challenge was not simply identifying what AI could do, but understanding what Pacific reef practitioners actually needed, and ensuring they shaped the solutions rather than having technology prescribed from outside.
CoAligned was engaged to facilitate a programme of research and collaborative design that would surface practical use cases while establishing guardrails for responsible deployment.
The solution
The programme combined technical assessment with deep practitioner engagement to identify where AI could genuinely support conservation decision-making.
A survey of 22 reef managers and practitioners across Pacific Island nations established baseline AI adoption patterns and identified key challenges. This was followed by an interactive workshop in Brisbane bringing together practitioners from government, NGOs, academia and research organisations to collaboratively develop and validate use cases.
The research surfaced three interconnected challenges that any AI solution would need to address: the science-to-community translation gap, trust and quality control tensions, and the need for Pacific-wide knowledge sharing. Rather than proposing technology first, the programme established a core principle: LLMs should support decision-making, not replace it. This human-centered framing has shaped a practical and responsible roadmap for rolling out capabilities across the Pacific.