Biodiversity data driving nature net gain for infrastructure projects

Discover how Ramboll’s Galago team helped the UK National Highways to understand their interaction with nature and work towards a 10% biodiversity net gain across 7,000 km road network.
Path to the white cliffs on the coast of Dover, UK
Making biodiversity commitments
National Highways made a commitment to deliver biodiversity net gain (BNG) across their land that runs adjacent to motorway and trunk road network. The government-owned company, like other UK businesses, must also adhere to government BNG regulations. In 2025, all nationally significant infrastructure projects must deliver a 10% biodiversity net gain.
Delivering on biodiversity data needs
To reach a 10% net gain, National Highways need to monitor biodiversity changes across their land assets. This is where Ramboll’s Galago Team came in to help generate biodiversity data, in order to provide insights necessary to inform these commitments and regulations, in turn guiding any necessary management and intervention activities. Galago by Ramboll is a geospatial intelligence team who have developed a range of innovative solutions used for sustainable land management and biodiversity restoration.
To monitor biodiversity across the Strategic Road Network (SRN) in an accurate, defensible, repeatable, and cost-effective manner, our team created a prototype solution. That protype produced network-wide digital maps of landcover and habitat types using satellite imagery and machine learning.
Preparing for and predicting the future
To help with habitat predictions, Galago created a cloud-optimised data processing and modelling pipeline. The pipeline used hundreds of multi-temporal satellite images and collated training data to create well-performing machine learning models which effectively predicted habitat types across the SRN. This solution:
  • Mapped the 14 most common landcover types across all designated areas
  • Generated an annual overview of those landcover types including a retrospective view of biodiversity performance with archive data
  • Calculated biodiversity units across the network
Most significantly, our solution offers repeatability for annual monitoring purposes and efficiency relative to conventional methods. By applying this solution, our client can now:

Enhancing biodiversity through landcover monitoring

  • :
    Track landcover type changes over time across the road network
  • :
    Identify opportunity locations for biodiversity improvements
  • :
    Collect data and insights at the strategic and project level to support achieving a corporate biodiversity net gain

“Ramboll’s Galago team combined a strong understanding of our organisation and our key drivers, as well as strong technical expertise, to develop a solution that supported our activities. The outputs from the initial phases were exciting and opened our eyes on innovative options to improve our asset data knowledge, as well as manage the environment and biodiversity across the Strategic Road Network.”

Ben Hewlett
Senior Environmental Advisor, National Highways

Let’s close the gap on biodiversity

With nature-positive solutions, we can drive economic growth while improving biodiversity.
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