Partner Success with AWS / General Public Services / United Kingdom

December 2024
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Lambert Labs

Bat Conservation Trust gets Better Bat Counts Using Lambert Labs to Build Scalable Solution on AWS

Learn how the Bat Conservation Trust uses Amazon Web Services to increase the speed and scalability of its research while reducing costs.

4

weeks to go live with initial AWS infrastructure rebuild

100x

speed up in processing times of data ingested into the data pipeline

150

years of researcher effort can now be done in 10 days

10x

increase in monitored sites, from 40 to 400

Overview

The Bat Conservation Trust (BCT) is a UK-based nonprofit organization that is dedicated to the conservation of bats and their habitats. The BCT uses a variety of recording devices, such as the AudioMoth, to record bat activity at hundreds of locations across the UK. The recordings are then analyzed to identify the species of bats, their numbers, and their activity. This involves processing large volumes of data—one night’s recording of a single site can easily generate 30 GB or more, and this amounts to hundreds of terabytes when multiplied across many sites and dates. BCT needed a timely, reliable, scalable, and cost-effective way to ingest, analyze, and store its data. Working with AWS Partner Lambert Labs, it increased processing speeds, cut costs, and has been able to grow its coverage.

Photo by Daniel Hargreaves

Opportunity | Using Technology to Protect the Environment

Monitoring and research programs are central to the BCT’s work. Volunteers across the UK help with bat counts and set up monitors to supplement the work done by its core staff. The BCT’s bespoke processing tools—called the BCT Sound Classification System (SCS)—were developed in-house and used machine learning (ML) algorithms that were developed jointly by the University of Edinburgh and University College London (UCL) to analyze bat recordings. As a proof of concept, it worked well, but the system couldn’t scale to handle large amounts of input data—an estimated 100 TBs or more—and was constraining BCT’s research.

Bats eat insects almost exclusively and that prevents billions of dollars per year globally in damage to agricultural crops. The health of bat populations can indicate issues with the larger environment. Getting a clear understanding of where bats live and hunt is core to BCT’s work. “We generate a huge amount of data,” says Dr Lia Gilmour, research manager at Bat Conservation Trust. “Passive acoustic monitoring of a site—putting out a sensor and leaving it at the site—can easily generate a large amount of data in a night. Our tools were very good at processing and classifying the data, but not being able to process the data quickly enough was holding us back.” The SCS had shown what was possible. Using technology to analyze survey recordings reduced the need for people to monitor and classify the data. The BCT needed a way to scale its system so it wouldn’t be limited in the number of sites it could survey. As a nonprofit organization, it also wanted to find a way to cut costs so it could use the funding it had to do more.

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Working with Lambert Labs to optimize our system on AWS has given us a huge boost.”

Dr. Lia Gilmour
Research Manager and Head of Conservation Projects, Bat Conservation Trust

Solution | Lambert Labs Helps BCT Scale and Accelerate its Work Using AWS

The BCT looked for ways to expand its capabilities using technology. It was introduced to AWS Partner Lambert Labs by its Amazon Web Services (AWS) account manager and the two organizations worked together to give BCT greater reach and power. The first step was to rebuild BCT’s data processing pipeline so that it could scale to whatever level was needed. “The team at BCT are really smart,” says George Lambert, chief executive officer and founder of Lambert Labs. “They knew what they wanted their tools to do, which was to scale up to let them do more. We applied our data processing expertise, our knowledge of AWS services, and our human skills to take on that challenge and rebuild their AWS infrastructure, launching the first iteration in just 4 weeks.”

This wasn’t just a simple lift and shift, though. The original version of the SCS was running on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), but the resources weren’t optimized. Lambert Labs, with its deep understanding of AWS, rearchitected BCT to run using AWS Batch, which lets developers, scientists, and engineers efficiently run hundreds of thousands of batch computing jobs while optimizing compute resources. This provides the ability to focus on analyzing results and solving problems, as well as faster ingestion of the data that BCT was generating. AWS Fargate, a serverless, pay-as-you-go compute engine that lets users focus on building applications without managing servers, gave BCT access to the compute resources it needed—as well as the ability to spin down those resources when not needed. Lambert Labs also containerized the SCS to add scalability and flexibility. AWS Lambda—a service that runs a user’s code in response to events and automatically manages the compute resources—works to keep things moving through the pipeline. The system also uses Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) and Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) for storage.

Using multiple AWS accounts for policy-based management on AWS Organizations helps more easily manage policies for groups of accounts and automate account creation. Lambert Labs also worked with BCT to develop a staging environment, enabling BCT to safely work on improving its capabilities. “Lambert Labs are great to work with,” says Gilmour. “They took the time to understand what we needed to do and then worked with us to give us something that makes our job easier. We don’t have to spend time worrying about managing AWS or waiting for data to process. We can focus on our mission: bats.” Lambert Labs also helped BCT apply for an AWS IMAGINE Grant, which it received. These are public grant opportunities open to registered nonprofit charities that are using cloud technology to accelerate their mission. “We couldn’t guarantee that BCT would receive the grant,” says Lambert. “However, we wanted to make them aware of it and help with the process.” That grant, says Gilmour, is a welcome bonus to working with Lambert Labs. “It really was a collaborative effort,” she says. “We appreciate the help. It’s very exciting. It’ll help us get more done.”

 

Outcome | BCT Now Has a Better, Faster, More Affordable Way to Help Bats

Working with Lambert Labs, BCT has seen a dramatic change in performance. Data now moves through its pipeline 100 times faster than it did previously. The volume of data it is now processing would take an expert human analyst 150 years to work through, and that can now be done in just 10 days. In addition to having a faster solution, the Bat Conservation Trust is also saving money. Bat data tends to be seasonal, with very high spikes at certain times and little activity at others. Because of the way its solution scales, BCT is saving 20 percent on cloud costs by spinning down resources when it doesn’t need them.

Beyond working more quickly and affordably, BCT can also do more. With the removal of bottlenecks in processing and a scalable SCS, BCT is now active at 10 times more sites across the UK. It now monitors more than 400 sites, up from 40. “Everyone at the Bat Conservation Trust is passionate about getting a better understanding of bats and their environment,” says Gilmour. “Working with Lambert Labs to optimize our system on AWS has given us a huge boost. The data we’re gathering today will be used for years to better understand bats and the environment.”

About Bat Conservation Trust

Founded in 1990 to coordinate the work of more than 80 bat conservation organizations, the Bat Conservation Trust operates throughout the UK. Its vision is a future rich with wildlife, where bats and humans can thrive together. And its mission is to conserve species through innovative monitoring techniques, along with research and outreach. The BCT supports local bat groups across the UK and has nearly 5,000 members. It works with volunteers, scientists, industry, and government—both locally and nationally—on a range of projects. Its work focuses on discovering more about bats and how they use the landscape, and on taking action to protect bats and enhance the landscapes on which they rely.

About AWS Partner Lambert Labs

Lambert Labs, headquartered in London, is a software development company and cloud computing consultancy. Founded in 2017, its team of AWS experts consists of mathematicians and scientists who specialize in software engineering and cloud computing. Professional services include application development, database migration, digital transformation, managed hosting, containerization, and microservices architecture and management. The company builds diverse digital solutions for global customers across a range of different industries.

AWS Services Used

AWS Batch

AWS Batch is a fully managed batch computing service that plans, schedules, and runs your containerized batch ML, simulation, and analytics workloads across the full range of AWS compute offerings.

Learn more »

AWS Fargate

AWS Fargate is a serverless, pay-as-you-go compute engine that lets you focus on building applications without managing servers.

Learn more »

AWS Lambda

AWS Lambda is a compute service that runs your code in response to events and automatically manages the compute resources, making it the fastest way to turn an idea into a modern, production, serverless applications.

Learn more »

Amazon RDS

Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) is an easy-to-manage relational database service optimized for total cost of ownership.

Learn more »

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