$1.62B
in natural capital quantified across the pilot portfolio
40
Bridge Axioms extracted from peer-reviewed literature
9
Indo-Pacific marine sites in the pilot
Nereus needed to close the gap between marine biodiversity data and institutional capital, translating satellite readings and peer-reviewed science into auditable financial exposure metrics that a credit committee could actually act on. Semantica became the provenance engine at the core of that translation: extracting Bridge Axioms from scientific literature, linking every claim permanently to its source DOI, and assembling them into a queryable financial inference graph. The result is $1.62 billion in natural capital quantified across 9 marine sites, with a complete, reproducible audit trail from sensor reading to investment-grade disclosure.
About
Nereus is a Hybrid Intelligence System for marine biodiversity and blue finance, co-developed with graph intelligence researcher Jayson A. Gutierrez Betancur. The system targets a structural failure in global capital markets: a $1.3 trillion annual financing gap for nature-based solutions that persists not because of a lack of data, but because existing data cannot be translated into the auditable financial metrics that institutional investors and lenders require. Nereus covers 9 pilot marine sites across the Indo-Pacific, ingesting Copernicus satellite passes, 100M+ OBIS biodiversity occurrence records, and several hundred peer-reviewed papers into a single, queryable intelligence layer backed by full scientific provenance.
The Problem
The world's oceans generate an estimated $2.5 trillion in economic value annually: fisheries, coastal protection, tourism, and carbon sequestration. Yet this natural capital remains almost entirely invisible to the financial system. The problem is not a lack of data. OBIS holds over 100 million marine species occurrence records. Copernicus satellites pass over every reef and mangrove bed multiple times daily. Hundreds of peer-reviewed papers quantify ecosystem service values with confidence intervals. The problem is that none of this translates automatically into a financial number that capital can underwrite.
- $1.3 trillion per year the annual financing gap for nature-based solutions, the single largest unmet capital need in climate finance
- 100M+ OBIS occurrence records globally, none carrying financial valuation raw occurrence data is not investment-grade intelligence
- 18–24 months for a typical TNFD-compliant nature risk disclosure too slow for any institutional due diligence process
- No auditable trail from satellite pixel to ecosystem service to financial risk metric every number in the market today is an analyst opinion with no verifiable lineage
- Siloed infrastructure: satellite teams, ecologists, financial modelers, and compliance teams work in incompatible formats with no shared data layer
- Standard ESG frameworks produce qualitative narratives insurance underwriters and debt investors require P5/P50/P95 confidence intervals with stated assumptions
“Raw biodiversity data, even at 100 million occurrence records, is not financial intelligence. The missing layer is a verifiable, deterministic bridge from peer-reviewed science to a number that institutional capital can trust and underwrite.”
The Solution
Semantica is the provenance engine inside Nereus. It ingests peer-reviewed scientific literature, extracts causal claims with full DOI attribution, and assembles them into a deterministic financial inference graph. The core mechanism is the Bridge Axiom: a conditional financial primitive derived directly from a scientific paper and permanently linked to its source. An AI agent traverses the verifiable graph path from a raw satellite or sensor reading, through one or more validated axioms, to a calculated financial exposure metric. The output is a P5/P50/P95 exposure figure with a complete, reproducible audit trail from science to finance. The system also generates TNFD-compliant LEAP disclosure packages on demand, as a byproduct of the analysis rather than a separate workflow.
System pipeline
- 1
Ingest
Copernicus satellite passes, OBIS occurrence records, and peer-reviewed literature (PDFs) are pulled for all 9 marine sites and normalized into a unified data layer
- 2
Extract
each paper is read for causal ecological claims, and every claim is linked to its DOI, author list, journal, and page number before any inference is drawn
- 3
Build
a directed causal graph is assembled: sensor readings connect to validated Bridge Axioms, which connect to ecosystem service valuations and financial outcomes
- 4
Traverse
an AI agent follows the verifiable graph path from a raw observation to a financial risk metric, firing each relevant axiom in sequence and recording which path was taken
- 5
Quantify
Monte Carlo simulation over the graph produces P5/P50/P95 financial exposure metrics with stated confidence intervals and sensitivity analysis by input variable
- 6
Disclose
the current portfolio state is evaluated against TNFD/LEAP compliance rules and a formatted disclosure package is generated, cited to source, ready for reporting
Semantica Modules
Provenance Tracing
Traces every extracted claim back to its source DOI, author, journal, and page number. No assertion in any output is unattributed. The audit trail is structural, not optional.
Causal Graph Assembly
Assembles a directed acyclic causal graph connecting sensor readings through Bridge Axioms to ecosystem service valuations and downstream financial outcomes.
Compliance & Disclosure
Evaluates the current portfolio against TNFD/LEAP compliance rules, identifies material dependencies and transition risks, and flags gaps before a disclosure window opens.
Decision Context Log
Records the complete decision context for every financial metric: which axioms fired, which inputs were used, who ran the query, and what the graph state was at execution time.
Results
| Task | Before | After Semantica |
|---|---|---|
| Time to P5/P50/P95 financial risk metric per site | 18–24 months of manual literature review, ecological modeling, and financial translation | Under 48 hours for a full 9-site portfolio, reproducible on demand |
| Attribution trail for every financial claim | Analyst opinion: no verifiable lineage, not auditable by an external reviewer | Every number traces through the graph to a specific DOI, page, and axiom |
| TNFD / LEAP disclosure preparation | 6-month standalone project per reporting cycle requiring external consultants | Auto-generated on demand from the live knowledge graph, a byproduct of analysis |
| Biodiversity monetization output format | Qualitative narrative, no confidence interval, no stated assumptions | P5/P50/P95 financial exposure with Monte Carlo confidence intervals |
| Capital readiness of the portfolio | Too opaque for institutional underwriting, no investable financial structure | Investment-grade intelligence with reproducible audit trail and stated methodology |
| Natural capital quantified across pilot | Not measurable with prior methods at any defensible confidence level | $1.62B across 9 Indo-Pacific marine sites with full provenance-backed valuation |
What the system can now answer
Who It Helps
Blue Finance Investors & Lenders
Underwrite nature-based assets with P5/P50/P95 metrics that carry a full scientific audit trail, the kind of evidence you can put in a credit committee presentation without qualification.
Conservation NGOs & Project Developers
Convert existing field monitoring data and scientific partnerships into investment-grade disclosure packages without a separate financial modeling team or multi-year timeline.
TNFD / LEAP Compliance Teams
Nature risk disclosure becomes a byproduct of the analysis rather than a standalone six-month project, generated on demand from the live knowledge graph with every claim cited.
Marine Insurance Underwriters
Replace proxy assumptions in coastal and marine risk models with verified ecological coefficients derived from peer-reviewed literature, with full lineage to source.
Conclusion
The $1.3 trillion financing gap for nature will not close through better intentions or more data collection. It closes when capital can trust the numbers: when every financial claim in a nature portfolio is traceable to peer-reviewed science, every risk metric carries a confidence interval, and regulatory disclosure is a byproduct of analysis rather than a separate project. Nereus and Semantica show this working end to end, with $1.62B in natural capital already quantified across the pilot portfolio. For teams structuring blue finance instruments or preparing TNFD disclosures, the architecture is not a research prototype — it is running today.
From the Field
After our collaboration building Nereus, Jayson published this live demo and full breakdown — including the Bridge Axiom engine traversing the graph in real time, the $1.62B natural capital valuation across all 9 sites, and TNFD disclosure generation running as a byproduct of the analysis.
Get in touch
Structuring a blue finance instrument or preparing a TNFD disclosure?
We partner with climate finance teams, conservation lenders, and TNFD reporters building auditable natural capital intelligence. If your work depends on a verifiable path from science to financial number, we want to talk.
Start a conversation