What challenges did Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment face before AI implementation?

Lack of comprehensive environmental and biodiversity data due to challenging terrain. Urban monkey overpopulation leading to human-animal conflict and health risks. Inefficient energy distribution, high loss rates, and carbon emissions from the national grid. Inequitable water distribution in major cities due to legacy infrastructure and urban sprawl. Significant annual crop losses due to unpredictable pest outbreaks driven by weather conditions.

Source

MicrosoftPilotEvidence: Medium55/100

Indian Institutions Drive Environmental Sustainability with AI-Driven Initiatives

Use case typeAgriculture optimizationUpdated Jun 13, 2026

A series of Indian research organizations and NGOs collaborated with Microsoft to address pressing environmental challenges, leveraging advanced AI, IoT, and cloud resources. Funded through the AI for Earth grant, these projects focus on biodiversity, energy, water management, and sustainable agriculture. Specific use cases include satellite image processing for biodiversity mapping, non-invasive urban monkey population monitoring, AI-powered smart meter analytics for energy optimization, IoT-based water purity sensors, and pest prediction for farmers. Several solutions are at the pilot or trial deployment stage, often in partnership with state utilities or research-led NGOs. The integrated use of Microsoft Azure, machine learning, cloud storage, and Power BI forms the backbone of these advances, aiming to provide impactful and scalable models for other regions. The projects are geographically spread across India, with a focus on Northeast forest zones, metropolitan city utilities, and agricultural regions vulnerable to climate risks. Core to all initiatives are scalable data analytics on Azure cloud, machine learning pipelines for image and sensor data, and the democratization of AI for underfunded nonprofits. AI-powered apps enable real-time field data capture and analytics for monkey monitoring, while energy management and smart water solutions enable real-time resource allocation and pollution tracking. Projects often partner with government boards or NGOs for deployment and validation.

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Organization: Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment
Industry: Other
Location: India
Published: September 2018

Planned next steps

The source says the pilot could deliver: Enabled humane monkey population control.
The source says the pilot could deliver: Reduced energy loss and improved reporting.
Farmers using AI-based pest alerts reported better yields and reduced losses in initial pilot regions.

Why do we believe this deployment?Customer identity, provider attribution, maturity, and source checks

Customer: Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment, Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology Delhi, Wildlife Institute of India, Symbiosis Institute of Technology, International Crops Research Institute for Semi-Arid Topics, Pune-based NGO Prayas Energy Group, Bangalore Water Supply Sewerage Board
Provider: Microsoft
Maturity: Pilot
Linked source: news.microsoft.com

Several solutions are at the pilot or trial deployment stage, often in partnership with state utilities or research-led NGOs

Customer identity supportedSource describes one deploymentMaturity supported

Primary read

Use case focus

Showing 3 of 5

1AI-Driven Biodiversity Mapping
2Non-Invasive Urban Monkey Population Tracking
3Smart Meter Data Analytics for Energy Optimization

Lack of comprehensive environmental and biodiversity data due to challenging terrain.
Urban monkey overpopulation leading to human-animal conflict and health risks.
Inefficient energy distribution, high loss rates, and carbon emissions from the national grid.
Inequitable water distribution in major cities due to legacy infrastructure and urban sprawl.
Significant annual crop losses due to unpredictable pest outbreaks driven by weather conditions.

Deployment of AI-enabled satellite image classification for remote ecosystem mapping using Azure and Power BI.
Mobile and cloud-based AI vision solutions for non-invasive urban monkey tracking and vaccination monitoring.
Smart meters and machine learning on Azure Cloud for real-time energy optimization and predictive analytics.
IoT-enabled sensor networks and cloud AI for municipal water purity and usage monitoring, real-time public dashboards.
Weather and environmental data combined with Azure ML to predict pest infestations and automate farmer alerts.

Technologies

Azure Azure AI Azure ML IoT AI Power BI

Architecture

Each implementation combined field IoT sensors, real-time data streaming to Azure cloud, storage and large-scale analysis using Azure ML pipelines, and reporting via Power BI dashboards to stakeholders. The monkey population monitoring app deployed an AI-based computer vision model for identification and record-keeping in the cloud. Smart meter and water monitoring projects leveraged sensor data that was ingested into Azure for anomaly detection, predictive analytics, and visual reporting. Pest prediction leveraged weather, sensor and farmer-reported data, using distributed cloud-hosted ML models to push real-time advisories.

Sources & evidence1

Evidence: Medium55/100Evidence strength