11/10/2025
14:00 - 14:40
CS-Disruptive Innovation and Technology
Session with interpretation
Why attend
Learn how invasive species drive extinctions, disrupt ecosystems, and cost billions globally. Discover how the InvaPact project uses artificial intelligence and a new standardized metric to quantify impacts, prioritize risks, and improve conservation decision-making worldwide.
Session Description
Biological invasions are a major environmental issue of the 21st century, with significant impacts on ecosystems, biodiversity, and societies. Invasive alien species contributed to 60% of known extinctions, threaten health and livelihoods worldwide, and cost hundreds of billions of dollars annually. Yet, despite these impacts, they remain little known to stakeholders, policy makers, and the public. This is due to their very high number (>3,500 species) and the wide variety of ecological impacts they cause, from species loss to habitat degradation, ecosystem dysfunction, and loss of services. The absence of a common metric prevents us from quantifying and clearly communicating these impacts. The project InvaPact addresses this by creating a standardized metric and using artificial intelligence to extract data from over 20,000 studies, building the first global database of invasion impacts. A consortium of 120 experts from 36 countries now harnesses its power to prioritize species and regions of concern.Organized by
Ekthar