Nature IQ Uses AWS to Accelerate Natural Capital Assessment

Biodiversity assessments were traditionally one-off efforts that required deep ecological expertise and extensive manual interpretation. Data was often siloed in static reports, making it difficult for organizations to extract timely insights or apply findings across projects or portfolios. The CSIRO team recognized the need for a consistent, scalable approach to ecological assessment that could serve diverse sectors such as mining, energy, finance, real estate, and forestry.

Nature-related disclosure frameworks, such as the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosure (TNFD) and the Science Based Targets Network (SBTN), are raising expectations for how businesses report on biodiversity risks. In response, sustainability and operational leaders have faced growing pressure to quantify impact, evaluate trade-offs, and build nature-based strategies rooted in science. CSIRO identified this gap and worked with AWS to develop Nature IQ, a scalable, science-first platform for delivering faster, repeatable natural capital assessments. Nature lQ provides business leaders with a science-backed differentiator in an evolving landscape increasingly focused on biodiversity and nature-related risks.

Built on AWS, Nature IQ scales biodiversity assessments and makes ecological insights accessible across sectors. By adopting a fully serverless architecture, the team eliminated infrastructure management overhead and reduced assessment time from weeks to seconds.

 

The platform now delivers a portfolio-level view of biodiversity impact, supporting multi-asset analysis across diverse geographies and industries. This also helped organizations act quickly on nature-related risks and make better-informed decisions for strategy development and regulatory disclosure. With only a geographic footprint as input, Nature lQ provides fast, science-based assessments aligned to TNFD metrics, including ecosystem condition, connectivity, and species extinction risk. This capability supports businesses in measuring and reducing their ecological impact.

 

To run ecological models and automate assessment workflows, the platform used AWS Lambda, a serverless compute service, and AWS Step Functions, a service for orchestrating reliable, event-driven workflows. Using these services, Nature IQ automated the end-to-end assessment workflow, streamlining internal processes and removing the need for manual coordination. Furthermore, the agency reduced spatial query time from 1 hour to just 15 seconds, accelerating access to ecological indicators for decision-making.

 

Building a performance-optimized framework, the team made customer results available instantly by utilizing Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), a cloud object storage service, and Amazon CloudFront, a content delivery network service that distributes data globally with low latency. This infrastructure supports Nature IQ's scenario modeling capabilities, helping users compare outcomes of multiple land use strategies and prioritize nature-positive outcomes. The platform integrates historical and future biodiversity modeling, allowing users to assess past impact and forecast future ecological outcomes in near real time.

 

Nature lQ also deployed Amazon API Gateway, a fully managed service for creating and publishing Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) at scale. The platform uses the service to deliver assessment outputs through web applications and dashboards, making insights readily accessible to sustainability teams.

 

Nature IQ strengthened its security to meet the enterprise-grade requirements of its customers using AWS Secrets Manager, which securely stores and automatically rotates sensitive credentials; Amazon Cognito, which manages user sign-up authentication and access; and Amazon Verified Permissions, which provides fine-grained, policy-based authorization. The team also implemented AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) to centrally manage cryptographic keys and encrypt sensitive ecological data. A multi-account setup—separating development, testing, and production environments—further enhanced security posture and supported safe collaboration with external partners.

 

Working with AWS Professional Services, the Nature IQ team also re-architected its backend systems to accelerate development. The team can now integrate an entire scientific module with fewer than 50 lines of code, and each new indicator requires only 3 lines of code, compared to hundreds previously. Nature IQ is now positioned to rapidly expand its scientific scope and geographic coverage, supporting future metrics such as carbon, water, and ecosystem services.

With a scalable cloud foundation in place, Nature IQ is starting to expand its scientific scope and global reach. The agency is working on incorporating new indicators to support more comprehensive environmental assessments. These include land-based carbon cycle impacts, water stress, water quality, and emerging supply chain resilience metrics.

This expansion is already resonating with customers across key sectors of the economy. "South32 has been excited to be a part of the development of the Nature IQ tool, which we see as having great potential to assist businesses in understanding and addressing their impacts on the environment and supporting a nature-positive future," says Rory Swiderski, the principal of biodiversity strategy at South32, a global mining and metals company based in Perth, Australia.

As Nature IQ's scientific scope expands, the agency plans to extend the platform's use globally. Nature IQ aims to help organizations compare nature-related performance and harmonize disclosures across countries and jurisdictions.

To reduce friction in sustainability workflows, Nature IQ is also developing a one-click reporting feature aligned with emerging disclosure frameworks. This will simplify compliance and accelerate how organizations communicate nature-related performance to regulators and stakeholders.

The agency is further exploring Amazon Bedrock, a fully managed service for building generative artificial intelligence (AI) applications. The goal is to automate data ingestion, provide richer ecological context, and enrich scenario analysis. Nature IQ aims to scale its reach and make biodiversity intelligence more accessible across industries.

"Sustainability and operations leaders need more than snapshots of past impact—they need to anticipate and act ahead of change. Built on AWS, Nature IQ turns decades of ecological science into near real-time insight, helping users evaluate future scenarios in seconds. This shift is essential for driving nature-positive outcomes at the speed business demands," said Swaroop Tulsidas, the head of product for Nature IQ.