In the effort to combat desert locust outbreaks, a shift towards innovative monitoring and control strategies is imperative due to the limitations of traditional methods.
Technological advancements and community engagement are crucial to create efficient locust surveillance systems that can predict and manage invasions effectively.
Challenges include automating data collection at the grassroots level and overcoming usability barriers in existing digital locust surveillance platforms like the FAO's eLocust system.
Community-based monitoring, exemplified by indigenous systems in Ethiopia, plays a vital role in swiftly communicating locust breeding events but faces scalability issues.
Incorporating natural language processing and artificial intelligence can enhance the accuracy and speed of locust surveillance through automated data processing and predictive modeling.
Combining remote sensing technologies with AI-driven analytical frameworks enables the identification of locust risk zones and facilitates anticipatory interventions.
Collaboration across disciplines and strengthening political frameworks are necessary to enhance locust management, including cross-border coordination and data-sharing agreements.
Technological interventions must address equity issues by providing training, decentralized data hubs, and multilingual interfaces to ensure broad access and benefit for local stakeholders.
Ethical considerations such as privacy, data sovereignty, and inclusivity must be prioritized in the implementation of AI technologies for locust control.
The integration of UAVs with hyperspectral sensors presents promising opportunities for real-time monitoring of locust breeding grounds when coupled with AI analytics and community engagement.