Nature Locator

Dave Kilbey – Project Manager

http://leafwatch.naturelocator.org/

The Problem

The Concept

How the app works

• Users take a photo of a horse chestnut leaf

• The photo is GPS tagged by the phone

• A damage score is assigned by the user (0 = no damage 4= more than half of leaf is mined)

• The ground cover beneath the tree is assessed

• The record is submitted to us

Some Stats

• 12,000 downloads between 1st July & 1st October (2011) • 5200 records uploaded, of which most were valid But opening these things up to the public….. • 2 bottoms • 1 image I’m still trying to forget • 1 nine-year old’s birthday party • Several naked… • Other miscellany defying easy description

feet

Public Involvement

• Opens up a world of potential

• Puts at least one potential “recorder” in nearly every 10K square

• Means that the questions you ask need to be unambiguous and carefully thought out

• System open to potential abuse

• Results will need some form of moderation

NBN Map of Distribution

• National Biodiversity Network

• Cameraria ohridella

Distribution of records received

Heat Map: Shows density of records received

Standard Pin Map: Shows distribution of records received

Validation Leaderboard

• 300 participants and rising

Go on Andrew, only another 4040 records to go……

End of Season Results Map

The Lowdown

What it cost

• £65,000 JISC grant

• fEC £120,000

• 9 months with a team consisting of: – 2 programmers

– 1 designer

– 1 project manager

– 1 usability expert

– + 2 biologists in steering group

Benefits it brought

• “Accurate” crowd sourced data

• Public engagement

• c. 6 X the data generation of previous year using website alone

• Increases scope and reach of projects

• Publicity and enhanced public awareness

The Future

• We are looking into refinements and improvements

– Enhanced data handling (backend)

– User feedback

– More platforms

• We are actively looking into developing it as a service

• Invasive spp, biological survey and beyond

Questions??

dave.kilbey@gmail.com