Case Study: Washington State Department of Natural Resources speeds eelgrass video analysis with Microsoft Power BI and Azure

Washington State Department of Natural Resources uses Azure AI to automate aquatic resource monitoring, saving months of experts’ time

The Washington State Department of Natural Resources (DNR) manages millions of acres of public land and underwater habitat, and its Nearshore Habitat Program faces a major data challenge each summer: manually reviewing about 350 hours of underwater video from 120 sites to track eelgrass. The process is time-consuming, requiring roughly three months of work by two scientists. Microsoft Power BI is part of the broader Microsoft toolset the agency plans to use to make reporting more efficient.

Microsoft helped the DNR build an AI-driven workflow using Azure services, including Azure Cognitive Services, Azure Machine Learning, Azure Data Lake Storage, Logic Apps, and Synapse Analytics, with results to be visualized in Microsoft Power BI. The new process splits video into frames, analyzes eelgrass presence automatically, and is being tested against human classifications from 2022 data. The expected impact is significant: video analysis that once took several months for two people could be reduced to weeks with just one person handling uploads and quality control, improving efficiency, replicability, and freeing staff for other work.

Washington State Department of Natural Resources

Bart Christiaen

Natural Resource Scientist