This was a presentation prepared for the Citizen Science and Biodiversity: meeting at the Crossroads in October 2011 in UK

1. India Biodiversity Portal
Western Ghats Portal
http://indiabiodiversity.org
http://thewesternghats.in
October 2011

2. Outline of Slide Deck
 Biodiversity Portals in India
 Background of India Biodiversity Portal
(IBP) and Western Ghats Portal (WGP)
 Under the hood: Technology and Structure
 Citizen Participation

3. Biodiversity Portals
in India

4. Biodiversity Portals in India
 We believe there is a lot of information on the
Biodiversity in India that is dissipated among
many people.
 We believe strategic investment in
collating, aggregating, and publishing already
available information on Indian biodiversity will
provide huge dividends.
 Over the last few years there have been many
initiatives to address this.

5. Species Pages Initiatives
URL Focus Content People
Butterflies of India Butterfly 576 species; Krishnameg
http://ifoundbutterflies.org/ Species Pages 178 lifecycles; h Kunte
January 2010 3 keys; Ecologist
8500 Images
Indian Bio-resource Plants Flora digitized; KN
Information Network (IBIN) Species Pages Large content; Ganeshiah ,
http://sec.org.in/programs/india Spatial data Distribution UAS,
nbioresources data in grids; Bangalore
http://www.bisindia.org/ Distributed
2001 Nodes.
Project Brahma All Species 670 species PhD
http://www.projectbrahma.org/ Species Data Students
Summer 2010
Flowers of India Flowering Plants Many species Dinesh
http://www.flowersofindia.in Species Data Valke
May 2005 Identification Keys indiatreepix

6. Species Pages Initiatives
URL Focus Content People
French Institute of Pondicherry Western Ghats 500 species BR Ramesh
http://www.ifpindia.org/biodiver Tree Species 6 vegetation IFP
sityportal/index.php?lang=en Herbarium data maps
2008 Identification Keys
Eco Databases
Vegetation maps
Flora of Nilgiri. Species Page 271 species T Bala
http://opendata.keystone- Keystone
foundation.org Foundation
2008
efloraindia website Plants Many PM Garg
https://sites.google.com/site/efl Species Photos indiatreepix
oraofindia/
June 2007
Traditional medicine Medicinal Plant 6198 species; Darshan
http://envis.frlht.org/ Species Pages Herbarium; Shankar,
~2006 Atlas; FRLTH
Species Names IBP Partner

7. Species Pages Initiatives
URL Focus Content People
AVIS-IBIS Species pages for ~1000 bird Arpit
http://avis.indianbiodiversity.or birds species Deomurari,
g/ Expanding to other FES
December 2010 taxa IBP partner
India Biodiversity Portal Species Pages 611 species ATREE, IFP,
Western Ghats Portal Checklists 150 maps Consortium
http://indiabiodiversity.org Species Distribution 112127 of partners
http://thewesternghats.in Biodiversity occurrence
December 2008 Conservation records
Madhya Pradesh Forest Governance and Maps Anil Oberoi,
http://mpforest.org/ monitoring Government Forest
~2006 initiatives Officer
Data source
for protected
areas

8. Citizen Science Initiatives
URL Focus Content People
MigrantWatch Citizen Science 30 species Suhel
http://www.migrantwatch.in/ Bird migration 1400 Quader,
July 2007 participants NCBS
SeasonsWatch Citizen Science. 100 trees Suhel
http://www.seasonwatch.in/ Tree Phenology 800 participants Quader,
Jan 2011 and seasons. Expanding NCBS
Jackals: Past and Present Distribution of 470 MD
http://conservation.in/jackal/ind Golden Jackals observations Madhusudan
ex.php 60 day survey NCF
June 2011
Conservation Threats Conflict and 100 records of Hari
http://conservationthreats.org/ threats in conflict Krishnan.
December 2009 conservation Location details Personally
on a map supported
India Nature Watch
http://www.indianaturewatch.ne
t/

9. Mailing Lists
URL Focus Content People
indiatreepix Tree photograph Photos and PM Garg
https://groups.google.com/grou identification species note
p/indiantreepix/about?hl=en 1728 members
June2007 6000 message
1200 p/month
diversityindia: Picture sharing Pictures Vijay Barve
http://www.facebook.com/grou and identification
ps/DiversityIndia/
Feb 2011
NATHISTORY-INDIA Any topic on Diverse and Princeton
listserv@princeton.edu natural history of miscellaneous University
India notes
1118 members
75 p/month

10. Background of India
Biodiversity Portal and
Western Ghats Portal

11. IBP Phase I:
Mar 2008 - Dec 2008
 Endorsed by the National Knowledge
Commission, Govt. of India
 Placed in civil society
 Focused on map-based biodiversity information
 Species referencing system was a hard problem
with many big players.

12. IBP Phase I:
Mar 2008 - Dec 2008
 Three teams: Development, Curation and Design
 At launch, 100 map layers
 Funding: ~ USD 100K as contributions from
Jamshedji Tata Trust, JRS Foundation, private
donor, in-kind contribution
 Managed by consortium of Partners
 http://indiabiodiversity.org

13. Phase II: WGP
Nov 2010 – June 2013
 http://thewesternghats.in
 Multi-site Drupal system with IBP
 Feature set for phase II
 Species Pages
 Participation Interface
 Identification tools and application
 Funding: ~450K USD from CEPF; $150K for
development and $300K for campaign and
content.

14. CEPF Projects in the Western
Ghats Biodiversity Hotspot
 One of the most densely
populated biodiversity hotspots
 CEPF ~$4.5-million over five
year investment.
 20 Large Grants > $20,000 and
27 Small Grants < $20,000
 Large grant to build a open
access, public participatory
information portal.

15. Project Execution plan
Project Duration (32 months): Nov 2010 to June 2013
Data Assimilation and Campaign for Participation
Curation: Led by French led by IFP and Strand
Institute of Pondicherry (IFP) * Field campaigns for voluntary
* IFP has over 5 decades of work in participation of data among all
the Western Ghats stakeholders of the Western Ghats
* Additional sub-grants to curate data
CEPF projects data
Platform Development led by
Strand Life Sciences

16. Phase-I Phase-II Phase-III
Project Details June2011 June2012 June2013
Review of state-of-the art of web-GIS and conservation
portals.
Deploy all CEPF projects with distributed upload and
mechanisms for authentication and review.
Enhanced Web GIS platform with intuitive interfaces for
search and serve.
Deploy species pages and identification tools conforming to
global standards.
Deploy application tools for data visualization via a charting
and plotting module.
Deploy collaborative module for easy participation and
upload of data in collaboration with user groups.
Expose Application Programming Interfaces and
collaboration with global biodiversity portals.
Campaign to build an Open Source community and active
participation for long-term sustainability

17. The perpetual beta application
 The portal with basic features launched in June
2011
 Development by the Agile method
 The site will be in perpetual beta constantly under
development
 The application will be enriched with periodic
updates of features
 The site will be enriched with regular updates of
curated and contributed data

18. Content Strategy
 India centric and India focused
 Data management by French Institute
 Data from CEPF grantees and WGP partners
 Partner with IBIN as IBIN node, sharing and
exchanging species information
 Aggregate species information from other India
based sites
 Support data curation by EoL Rubenstein Fellow

19. Content Strategy
 Set up community based validation mechanisms
 Campaign among young researchers (YETI) to
participate and contribute
 Provide APIs to share information with other
sites.
 Crowd source for distribution information
 Inclusive and participatory governance

20. Implementation Partners

21. Team
G Muthusankar, IFP Ayyappan, IFP
BR Ramesh, IFP
Arunabha Ghosh, Strand Sravanthi, Strand
Chitra Ravi, ATREE
Prabhakar, Strand Rahul Yadav, Strand
Sabah Rubina, ATREE D Balasubramanian, IFP
Devayani Khare, IFP

22. Under the hood

23. Design Principles
 Conform to global standards for map data and
species data
 Use publicaly available services
 GNIname service
 GeoNames server
 IUCN conservation status APIs …
 Integrate maps and species pages
 Expose APIs for data exchange
 Contribute to global databases

25. Species Application

26. Data Model

27. Species Page Schema

28. Citizen Participation

29. Citizen participation plans
 Build icon library for species representation,
identification and navigation
 Expand biodiversity information, conservation
status, and occurrence records for species
through citizen participation
 Enhance collaboration and participation for data
generation and validation

30. Icons for Species
 Icons to navigate species pages
 Which other species are insect pollinated?
 Which other species have fleshy fruit?
 Which species fruit during March – April?
 Which other species share the same habitat?
 Identify species with icons
 Selecticons for species characteristics
 Narrow-down searches

31. Species Habit Leaf Flower Fruit Special
Type Margin Shape Type Color Type Armed Hairy
Baccaurea
Other
courtalensis
colors
Actinodaphne
malabarica
Cinnamomum
malabatrum white
Scleropyrum
pentandrum
Arenga
wightii

32. Actinodaphne
malabarica
hasHabit hasFlowerType
hasHabit Cinnamomum hasFlowerType
malabatrum
hasHabit hasFruitType
Scleropyrum
pentandrum
hasFruitType
hasHabit
Arenga hasFruitType
wightii

33. Habit (Trees, Shrubs, Climbers, Herbs,
Palms etc.,)
http://rs.tdwg.org/ontology/voc/
SPMInfoItems#Morphology LeafType (Simple, Compound)
LeafMargin (Entire, Lobed etc.,)
hasIdentificationCharacteristics LeafShape (Peltate, tri/palmi nerved etc.,)
FlowerType (Cauliflorus, axillary/terminal
etc.,)
FlowerColor (white, green, etc.,)
FruitType (Pod, Drupe, Berry, Capsule etc., )
ArmedNature (thorns etc.,)

34. XML of Species Information
Mangifera indica
<spm:hasInformation>
<spmt:Morphology rdf:ID=“Morphology">
<spm:context xml:lang="en">Western Ghats, India</spm:context>
<spm:hasContent xml:lang="en">
Mangifera indica is a large erect evergreen tree, … Leaves
alternate, simple, leathery, oblong-lanceolate, 16-30 x 3-7 cm,
on flowering branches, … There is great variation in the form,
size, color and quality of the fruits. These drupes may be nearly
round, oval, ovoid-oblong, or somewhat kidney-shaped
</spm:hasContent>
</spmt:Morphology>
</spm:hasInformation>

35. XML of Species with IC
Mangifera indica
<spm:hasInformation>
<spmt:Morphology rdf:ID=“Morphology">
<spm:context xml:lang="en">Western Ghats, India</spm:context>
<spm:hasContent xml:lang="en">
Mangifera indica is a large erect evergreen tree, …
Leaves alternate, simple, leathery, oblong-lanceolate, 16-
30 x 3-7 cm, on flowering branches, … There is great
variation in the form, size, color and quality of the fruits.
These drupes may be nearly round, oval, ovoid-oblong, or
somewhat kidney-shaped
</spm:hasContent>
<st:hasHabit>Tree</st:hasHabit>
<st:hasLeafType>Simple</st:hasLeafType>
<st:hasFruitType>Drupe</st:hasHabit>
</spmt:Morphology>
</spm:hasInformation>

36. Icon Resource Table
Taxonomy Taxon SPMInfoIte IC IC IC Value IC Icon
Rank Concept m Concept Description
Root All (0) Size Min … NA
Length
Root All (0) Size Max … NA
Length
Root All (0) Size Avg … NA
Length
… … … … … … …
Root All (0) Uses Medicine …
Root All (0) Uses Cooking …
… … … … … … …
Kingdom Plantae (0.0) Morphology Habit … (Tree / Shrubs /
Climbers …)
Kingdom Plantae (0.0) Morphology Leaf … (Entire / Lobed …)
Margin
Kingdom Animalia (0.1) Morphology Skeleton … (External /
Type Internal)
Phylum Arthropod Morphology Skeleton … External
(0.1.0) Type
Class Insecta Morphology Wings …
(0.1.0.0)
* IC = Identification Characteristic

39. Expand Species Occurrence records
 Harvest occurrence records from checklists and
map layers
 Use map module for crowd sourcing species
distribution
 Use applications on mobile devices to report
species occurrences with spatial coordinates
 Populate occurrence table with Location,
Species, Source, and Accuracy

40. Participation for Data Generation
and Validation
 Critical mass required for data generation and
validation
 Explore text mining of mailing lists to extract
information (indiatreepix)
 Design for three roles for each unit (Species
Page and Map Layers): Member, Validator,
Administrator
 Maintain revision history
 How to maintain history on map layers??

41. Roles for Participation
Role Privileges
Unit Member Add data to the unit
Modify added data
Delete added data
Unit Validator Add data to the unit
Validate data of members
Delete data members
Unit Administrator Add / delete any data
Assign roles

42. Thank you
October 2011