New technologies as decision aids for the advancement of ecological risk assessment

Moore's law states that the number of transistors that can be placed on an integrated circuit doubles every two years (Moore, 1975). This has led to a steady increase in the processing power of computers over time, and technology is now enhancing and advancing software and scientific applications, which has enabled computationally intensive methods such as machine learning, data science, modeling, and simulation (Figure 1). The advancement of computers and data-driven algorithms is profoundly impacting people's lives. It is changing the way we work, the way we learn, and the way we interact with the world around us. This editorial will discuss how scientists can benefit from the latest technology advancements and related tools by incorporating them into the ecological risk assessment (ERA) to study ecosystems as a way to create refined assessments and accelerate the turnaround times.