Presentation about the University of Bristol naturelocator suite of crowdsourcing and citizen science applications at the Mobile Apps for Research Summit, December 2014 at Birmingham University.

1. Research & Development / ILRTResearch & Development / ILRT
Nature Locator
Simon Price, Dave Kilbey, Jasper Tredgold, Chris Bailey,
Mark van Rossum, Mike Jones, Damian Steer

2. IT Services R&D / ILRT
What we do
• Work with researchers and organisations to
engage the public with data collection
• Design bespoke smartphone applications
• Innovate to take the technology in new directions
• Provide data visualisation tools to enhance feedback

3. IT Services R&D / ILRT
UK Butterfly Survey
BatMobile

4. IT Services R&D / ILRT
Example Nature Locator Apps

5. IT Services R&D / ILRT
How it works
Lat/Long obtained via phone’s GPS in the field
Normal accuracy between 2 and 8m
51.391709743,-
0.170123657
Photo +
Metadata

6. IT Services R&D / ILRT
Making a difference

7. IT Services R&D / ILRT
PlantTracker results

8. IT Services R&D / ILRT

9. IT Services R&D / ILRT
iRecord data access

10. IT Services R&D / ILRT
Some statistics
• PlantTracker
• 12,000 downloads
• 5,500 records of invasive species since Aug 2012
• Appearance on BBC Countryfile
• Data has already enabled early intervention
• Cost saving to the Environment Agency
• Interest from many groups around the UK

11. IT Services R&D / ILRT
BatMobile project
• Services such as SoundHound and Shazam enable
people to identify songs they hear, using a mobile app.
• BatMobile aims to apply the same principle to identify
species of bats from their ultrasonic calls.
• Challenges:
• realtime on a mobile
• online vs. offline analysis
• ultrasound => need a special microphone

12. IT Services R&D / ILRT
Identifying bats by their calls...

13. IT Services R&D / ILRT

14. IT Services R&D / ILRT
BatMobile demo app

15. IT Services R&D / ILRT

16. IT Services R&D / ILRT
Summary
• Why it works for researchers
• Why it works for the public

17. IT Services R&D / ILRT
Why it works
• For researchers:
• High quality geo-located data
• Photo attached (verifiable… most of the time)
• Enables previously impractical surveys
• Improves public understanding of research
• For the public:
• Can use phone to do something useful...!
• Apps themselves are informative
• Accessible by anyone (potentially)
• Feedback from immediate visibility of contribution

18. IT Services R&D / ILRT
naturelocator.org