09 March 2026

Ed Baker, Acoustic Biology Researcher at the Natural History Museum and Hilary Tam, Sustainability Leader, Europe Middle East & Africa at Amazon Web Services install an environmental sensor in the pond to measure temperature at various depths. © The Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London

Unveiled as part of the Urban Nature Project, the revamped space invites visitors into a biodiverse landscape that serves a dual purpose: a public green refuge and a fully instrumented scientific observatory capable of running around the clock. The collaboration with AWS underpins this ambition, ensuring that every data point collected in the gardens can feed into ongoing research into how urban ecosystems behave in a rapidly changing climate.

A sensor-first landscape

To bring this idea to life, the museum embedded a network of environmental and acoustic sensors throughout the gardens. These devices continually track temperature fluctuations, humidity levels, water conditions in the ponds, and even the subtle chorus of urban and natural sounds. The underwater microphones capture audio frequencies that the human ear misses, revealing everything from amphibian activity to the acoustic signatures of passing insects. Over time, this system is expected to generate many terabytes of recordings, giving scientists a depth of ecological insight that would be impossible through manual surveying alone.

Alongside the hardware sits a strategy for environmental DNA monitoring. By collecting tiny traces of genetic material from soil and water, researchers can detect organisms that never reveal themselves to the naked eye. This adds a sensitive biological layer to the sensor data, enabling the museum to build a species-level picture of biodiversity that is continually updated. The technology turns what would once have been a static wildlife snapshot into a constantly refreshing view of the living world just outside the museum’s doors.

“We’re incredibly excited about the switch-on of our new environmental sensor network. This marks a major milestone in transforming our gardens into a living laboratory, helping us better understand how urban nature is changing in real time. With the support of Amazon Web Services, we’re now able to collect and share data at an unprecedented scale, deepening our understanding of biodiversity and drive forward science-led nature recovery in the UK’s urban spaces,” says Ed Baker, Acoustic Biology Researcher at the Natural History Museum.

Cloud infrastructure that binds the ecosystem together

The flow of information only becomes useful once it is processed, analysed and shared, and this is where AWS’s cloud services form the backbone of the project. The museum’s Data Ecosystem platform acts as a central environment for all incoming data streams, integrating acoustic recordings, eDNA results, microclimate readings and visual observations into a single, scalable system. Built on serverless and managed AWS technologies, the platform allows the museum’s scientists to handle large, fast-growing datasets without maintaining physical servers or complicated infrastructure behind the scenes.

The cloud-based environment also makes collaboration far simpler. Researchers based at the museum and across the UK can securely access data and analytical tools, compare findings, and run models that show how biodiversity responds to seasonal change, extreme weather or urban activity. Historical records that date back almost three decades have already been absorbed into the system, allowing today’s observations to be set against long-term baselines. Citizen science plays a role too: data from nationwide programmes flows into the same platform, giving non-scientists a meaningful stake in the research and expanding the scale of observation far beyond what museum staff could achieve on their own.

A blueprint for urban biodiversity research

The result of this collaboration is a garden that behaves far more like an outdoor laboratory than a landscaped attraction. Instead of offering occasional glimpses into the species that pass through, the space delivers a continuous, highly detailed narrative of how urban nature shifts from hour to hour and season to season. The project establishes a model that other towns, cities and institutions can adapt, showing how cloud technology, environmental sensors and modern genetic techniques can turn even small urban green spaces into valuable ecological observatories.

“We are delighted to support the Natural History Museum to transform and accelerate its scientific research and community science capabilities with the cloud. By building the Data Ecosystem using cloud technology the Museum’s scientists can securely store and process data from the gardens for the first time. This allows the Museum to turn this data into actional insights to support the UK’s urban nature recovery. The scientists can continue deepening their understanding of the UK’s urban diversity by using the cloud to scale-up the Data Ecosystem as more data from the gardens is collected over time,” says Hilary Tam, Sustainability Leader, Europe Middle East & Africa at Amazon Web Services.

As the data continues to accumulate, the museum now has the tools to explore questions that were previously inaccessible: how microclimates evolve within metres of each other, how species respond to extreme temperatures, how urban noise influences wildlife behaviour, and how biodiversity ebbs and flows in real time. The project signals a shift in how museums engage with science, positioning the Natural History Museum not just as a guardian of past life, but as a dynamic centre for understanding the living world that surrounds it today.