Yandex Wins Green Digital Award for AI-Powered Hogweed Detection via Satellite
At the CIPR Digital-2026 conference, Yandex won the “Green Digital” award for an AI-powered project that detects Sosnowsky’s hogweed — a toxic invasive plant — using satellite imagery. The service employs a computer vision model trained on a dataset of 10,000 images to automatically flag infestation hotspots, completing the task roughly 50 times faster than manual search.
The system has already helped identify large infestation zones across 18 regions of Russia and currently monitors territories in the Tver and Yaroslavl regions covering approximately 100,000 km². The project highlights how computer vision and satellite data are becoming practical tools for ecology, land monitoring, and natural risk management — a reminder that AI extends well beyond chatbots and code assistants.