We are happy to announce a new definition for the ARIES acronym to better capture the scope and breadth of the project. From now on ARIES means Artificial Intelligence for Environment and Sustainability.
With this rebranding, we align the project’s identity to its current goals, applications and community, as a response to the evolution of the project during these last years.
It’s been 13 years since a consortium of policy makers, scientists and conservation professionals began developing the next generation of rapid ecosystem services assessment and evaluation, the ARIES (ARtificial Intelligence for Ecosystem Services) project and technology.
Ever since, our project has grown, involving new research areas within the environmental and sustainability fields, still focused on ecosystem services but spanning much wider problem areas, such as natural capital accounting, food security, spatial planning, and renewable energy.
In the words of the ARIES project leader, Ferdinando Villa: ”Every day ARIES is applied to new challenges, linking, synthesizing and providing easy access to knowledge much beyond its initial applications. It’s time for our name to reflect who we are and what we do today, symbolizing the breadth of our target and our dynamic future within the AI world.”
Together with the new definition, we also introduce a redesigned ARIES logo. The restyled logo includes the acronym “ARIES” and its meaning.
Proud as we are of our history and innovative approach, we retain the core elements of the original logo. The sun, the sky, the forest and land symbolize the Earth and its environment, while the white compass, also recalling the A of ARIES, reflects the central theme of measuring, mapping and reducing uncertainty in environmental decision.
Symbolically, we also keep the borderless white circle, which suggests the whirling dynamism that has been a hallmark of the project.
In the upcoming weeks, we will update all our communication literature and online presence with the new name and logo. Meanwhile, feel free to download our new logo by clicking on the image below!
