Demonstrating ReefSense: Leveraging water properties to create computational, climate-adaptive, artificial reefs
Year: 2025
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: Corals are endangered from climate change, due to exposure to sunlight during times of especially high water temperature. However, constantly shading corals also harms them. We thus introduce ReefSense: a passive computational system that can help shade corals using the energy of the ocean to sense and actuate. We have prototyped and tested ReefSense setups with 3D printed– and off-the-shelf components: the key aspect is that the system uses the energy of temperature change and water flow to deploy shade when it is needed. We discuss ReefSense, a bachelor thesis project, as a point in a more general space of computation that can work with nature instead of against it, and allow future computational systems to integrate more tightly with the world.
Authors: Linnea Andersen, Valkyrie Savage
Institution: University of Copenhagen
Language: English
Subfield: Ecology
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Funder: Novo Nordisk Fonden
Award: G7847942183
OpenAlex ID: W4413844222