Restor is an online platform that lets anyone analyze the ecological restoration potential of any place on Earth. It grew out of the Crowther Lab at ETH Zurich, the group led by ecologist Thomas Crowther, and launched as an ETH spin-off in 2021 in collaboration with Google. Crowther has described it as a kind of Google Earth for ecosystem restoration.
The platform combines machine-learning ecosystem models, field data from tens of thousands of scientists, satellite imagery, and environmental layers such as climate, rainfall, and soil. From these it predicts what native species would naturally grow at a given location and estimates the restoration or conservation value of the land. Built on Google Earth Engine and Google Cloud, it lets users zoom to sub-meter resolution and overlay restoration projects on a shared map. By its 2021 launch, tens of thousands of restoration and conservation initiatives had already registered, turning the platform into a social network where project managers, farmers, foresters, and researchers can find data and connect.
Restor was a finalist for the inaugural Earthshot Prize in 2021 and became an official partner of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. Crowther stressed that the organization does not sell its data, positioning Restor as open infrastructure for a restoration movement rather than a data broker - a response to the reality that historically only a minority of reforestation projects succeed.
Why business readers should care: Restor packages cutting-edge ecology models into a free, map-based tool, lowering the expertise barrier so that a smallholder or local NGO can make the same data-driven restoration decisions that previously required a research lab.