Talk, TDWG Biodiversity Information Standards Conference 2013 Abstract-Volume: 2013-11-08
Abstract:
DiversityMobile is a smartphone application, designed for monitoring ecological and biodiversity data in the field (http://www.diversitymobile.net). It is a component of the modularised Diversity Workbench (DWB) framework for the management of biodiversity and environmental research data. DiversityMobile Windows Phone is implemented for smartphones running WP versions 7.5 to 8 and uses GPS functionality as well as digital imagery. A sophisticated database modeling and design facilitates the structured storage of monitoring and ecological data as well as collection data in the field in online and offline scenarios. The application is freely available at the Windows Phone Marketplace under http://www.windowsphone.com/de-de/store/app/diversitymobile/54215bc5-8640-40df-917d-ae718b7542f3 and is best deployable as part of the DWB. Its user interface with the WP 8 live tiles on touchscreen is comfortable to use, especially as part of a DWB-based virtual research environment. DiversityMobile can access web services as provided by the SNSB IT Center (Bavarian Natural History Collections), which include useful taxonomic name lists, digitized topographic maps and various vocabularies, as well as data from previous collections. Data are automatically georeferenced and augmented with information about the observer / collector. Recording date and time are saved as well. Data records and assigned multimedia objects are submitted to a Diversity Workbench data repository via a web service. Data are specifically formatted, which allows importing them in the DWB database system without the need of any further transformations. Only an internet connection is needed at the start and end of a field expedition: for the download of vocabularies and geographical maps on the smartphone and for the upload of data and multimedia files from the mobile device to the data repository. All field work may be performed offline in the case no mobile phone network connection exists. After field work and data upload, DiversityMobile users are encouraged to curate and quality-control their data using client-server installations and rich clients of the DWB database management components. All these database components with corresponding rich clients are freely available for download under http://diversityworkbench.net/Portal/Software (open source). At the SNSB IT Center, a complete set of DWB databases is running with an ongoing data pipeline, which starts with field data recording via smartphone and tablet PC, web services for data transfer, data management in DWB databases, then data publication on the GBIF portal. This data pipeline also includes the harvesting of datasets in DWB cache databases and a BioCASe wrapper installation (see http://www.diversitymobile.net/wiki/IBF_Datasets_accessible_by_GBIF).