A-peel, A foraging enrichment device: Designing a foraging enrichment device for the primates of ARTIS zoo

► Introduction & Client | Over the last decade, there has been a notable increase of interest in discussions surrounding animal welfare, driven by a deeper understanding of the mental states of animals. This growing awareness has triggered a global push to improve laws and regulations in animal welfare, prompting zoos worldwide to increase...

Enriching Machine Learning Model Metadata: Collecting performance metadata through automatic evaluation

As the sharing of machine learning (ML) models has increased in popularity, more so-called model zoos are created. These repositories facilitate the sharing of models and their metadata, and other people to find and re-use an existing model. However, the metadata provided for models is insufficient, with little focus on practical aspects of a...

Metadata Representations for Queryable Repositories of Machine Learning Models

Machine learning (ML) practitioners and organizations are building model repositories of pre-trained models, referred to as model zoos. These model zoos contain metadata describing the properties of the ML models and datasets. The metadata serves crucial roles for reporting, auditing, ensuring reproducibility, and enhancing interpretability....

The Ethics of Zoo Renovation

It is evident that modern zoos are attempting to educate visitors about animals and earth sciences, as well as implementing conservation and research programs for endangered species as stated in the World Association of Zoos and Animals priorities (WAZA, n.d.). However, despite their noble intentions and friendly image, zoos have some darker...

Urban Forest Hotel Amsterdam

The Urban Forest Hotel Amsterdam is a hotel where guests, Amsterdammers and other visitors will find a small but profoundly natural forest of native trees within the city. It is a space where human and non-human animals can come and live together. Located besides the Artis zoo, it is a place that questions the future of the zoo and our...

Strengthening People’s Relationships with Biodiversity: An Innovative Paradigm for Zoos for Conservation

The project is undertaken for the organization of British and Irish Association of Zoos and Aquariums(BIAZA). BIAZA is an association with 121 member zoos and aquariums in the UK and Ireland. It’s member zoos and aquariums receive a whopping audience of about 35 million visitors every year, which is more than half of the total populations of the...

Reflecting on the safety zoo: Developing an integrated pandemics barrier model using early lessons from the Covid-19 pandemic

Our current predicament, the Covid-19 pandemic is first of all a health crisis. However, social disruption and economic damage are becoming visible some 7 months after the Wuhan City outbreak early December 2019. The authors wondered what could have been done better in prevention and repression of the Covid-19 pandemic from a safety...

The Future Zoo: Developing a method for sustainable exotic wildlife exhibition within the urban environment

How the zoo can have a sustainable place in our urban environment against the growing welfare concerns present in our society. Zoos are both loved and despised by people. Loved for their ability to bring people closer to exotic wildlife and despises for the ethics of keeping exotic animals in captivity. The existence of zoos is more and more...

Improving the visitor experience at Avifauna

This thesis describes the development of Voogel, a collection of bird masks with which children can experience a bird’s vision with their human eyes. Recent research showed that word of mouth marketing has lately been the most effective way of marketing for Avifauna and not other marketing programs they conduct, like flyers and posters. The goal...

Discovering the Wildlife Fund: Inspiring zoo visitors to contribute to wildlife conservation

Approximately 26% of all mammals is endangered and scientists estimate that half of the species will be extinct in 2100. Zoos have the potential to inspire, educate and influence a lot of people regarding wildlife conservation. Dierenpark Amersfoort, the most child-friendly zoo in the Netherlands, founded the Wildlife Fund. This fund raises...

A Day at the Zoo: Everyday Life as an Extraordinary Experience

A day at the zoo is an important part of the good life, through which humanity has the possibility to come face to face with nature in the urban environment of the city, their own habitat. As such it turns the zoo into a necessity for a city to truly understand what it takes to be a city, with all its complexities and contradictions. The project...

Experiencing gorillas in the cloud

The Project Experiencing gorillas in the cloud is a graduation project that aims ‘to create a product for the Apenheul that enhances the user experience of a visit to the park using sensor data’. In Apenheul a network of sensors has been placed around the gorilla island, constantly gathering data about the gorillas. Gorillas In the Cloud was...

The Apelication: An educational concept for children at primate park Apenheul

A concept creating a bond between children visiting Apenheul and the primates they see. The Apelication is a mobile phone application that encourages children to take a closer look at primates and stimulates mirrored behavior, showing the similarities between visitor and primate. After the visit at Apenheul a personal memory book can be taken...

Transformation of the Kumasi Zoological Gardens, towards a 21st century zoo.

This master thesis is a full plan for the transformation of the Kumasi Zoo in Ghana on urban/landscape/architecture/building technology scale.

Suiting the city-P5 presentation: Transformation the wall of Kumasi Zoo

Stroming in een haaienbassin

Sharks require a certain current condition in their basin for survival. The shark basin of Blijdorp zoo (Rotterdam) has been modeled in order to provide information regarding the currents in the basin and to optimize the physical environment for the sharks in the basin