BDRS –

Citizen Science Projects

Piers Higgs — Fri, 17 Jul 2015 03:52:51 +0000

As part of our own research and development, we have run a number of our own citizen science projects internally with our staff to test our own tools, like the BDRS. These have included:

The bat survey project, where our staff recorded bats around the Perth metropolitan area using Anabat recorders and our mobile tools (see our blog here from back in 2012),
Our Night Stalk event we held back in 2011 (aka “don’t ask Piers to identify a possum”),
The mole cricket experiments, where we used social media to record sightings of mole crickets (see our various blogs about this interesting insect),
Piers has migrated his own bird observations into our Gaia Resources BDRS instance, and has set up an ongoing survey using our mobile tools, and
Our “coffee” survey – where we have been using the app to record how good – or bad – the coffee is on our travels.

There are a number of other projects we’ve looked at with staff, and will be adding to in the future as we devleop more internal projects.

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Prawn Watch

Piers Higgs — Sat, 27 Jun 2015 05:25:31 +0000

Prawn Watch is a citizen science project run by the Swan River Trust’s River Guardians program aimed at increasing the community’s understanding of prawns in Western Australia’s Swan and Canning rivers, and Gaia Resources has participated in this by developing the Prawn Watch app for Apple and Android mobile devices. The app allows the prawning community to record and upload catch data to our main data store for citizen science, backed by the BDRS. This is our second app for the Swan River Trust, following on from the successful Dolphin Watch app we released in 2014. You can read more about this app via our blog via these articles:

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Bunbury Dolphin Discovery Centre

Piers Higgs — Tue, 09 Sep 2014 03:54:15 +0000

Under the Coastal Walkabout citizen science hub, we developed and deployed an App for the Bunbury Dolphin Discovery Centre, for both Android and iPhone devices.

This project involved the creation of a new App, based on the Coastal Walkabout App but restricted the sightings to the Indo-Pacific Bottlenose Dolphin (Tursiops aduncus).

The two Apps delivered observations of the dolphins to an implementation of the BDRS, where they contributed to the wider range of data available for research.

This project was discontinued in 2017 and the Apps withdrawn from the app stores.

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Marri Canker

Piers Higgs — Wed, 09 Jul 2014 00:12:14 +0000

Gaia Resources worked with Murdoch University’s Plant Pathology group to develop an app for recording Marri Canker disease around Western Australia. The Marri (Corymbia calophylla) is an iconic tree species and plays a major role as a food source, habitat tree and refugia for numerous vertebrate and invertebrate fauna, as well as being a key species for southwest beekeeping and honey production. Cankers are a symptom caused by the death of areas of bark and the cortex tissue below, and progresses over time to a point where it girdles the affected limb or trunk, resulting in the death of the branch or entire tree.

This was our first terrestrial citizen science app, launched back in December, 2013, and in early 2015 was given a round of polishing and re-release of the app. You can read more about the launch of the app on our blog at this link.

The app can be downloaded from the various mobile stores at:

iTunes – https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/the-marri-app/id742004918?mt=8
Google Play – https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gaiaresources.bdrsmobile.murdochmarri&hl=en

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Dolphin Watch

Piers Higgs — Thu, 20 Feb 2014 05:44:58 +0000

As part of the Coastal Walkabout citizen science hub, we have developed and deployed a mobile App for the Dolphin Watch project, for both Android and iPhone devices, and in March, 2017, we released a new version, rebuilt from the ground up.

This project initially involved the creation of a new Dolphin Watch App for the project, which was based on the Coastal Walkabout App, but with two major changes;

Dolphin Watch restricts sightings to Bottlenose Dolphins, and
The tracking component from Coastal Walkabout has been replaced with a customised “Dolphin Watch” tracker that only records position within the specific zones that are set up for the Dolphin Watch survey.

In terms of infrastructure, the original Dolphin Watch Apps deliver observations of the Bottlenose Dolphins to the Coastal Walkabout implementation of the BDRS, where they are then added to the wider range of data available for research. The Apps also deliver the Dolphin Watch survey data into the Dolphin Watch database that is managed by Swan River Trust. The new version – 2.0 – changed all this, and has a new framework and back end system, based on our Project Hydra citizen science toolkit.

We have written a number of different blogs about this project, including:

You can get the Dolphin Watch app for free from the iTunes or Google Play stores by clicking on either of the buttons below.

In 2015, the Dolphin Watch project was also a finalist at the WAITTA INCITE Awards in the Society category, and became a national finalist.

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Coastal Walkabout

Piers Higgs — Wed, 27 Nov 2013 20:33:17 +0000

Coastal Walkabout was an open-access citizen science initiative that we partnered together with Murdoch University and utilised smart-phone technology and social media to engage and motivate local communities to gather scientific observations within coastal and estuarine environments.

The Coastal Walkabout project was a development project that Gaia Resources were involved in throughout 2013 an in subsequent years. Gaia Resources deployed our now-deprecated BDRS product for the Coastal Walkabout project, and also developed Android and iPhone apps for the project.

The projects was closed in 2018, with all data returned to its original custodian as is our policy in such circumstances.

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Atlas of Living Australia

Piers Higgs — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 07:12:18 +0000

Gaia Resources’ Director, Piers Higgs, was appointed as the Citizen Science Team Lead for the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA) back in 2010, and led the ALA’s citizen science efforts, including the development of the Biological Data Recording System (BDRS). This involved frequent travel to Canberra, along with a wide range of duties meeting with external groups, and implementing the BDRS for a wide range of projects under the ALA’s auspices. Following on from this contract, Gaia Resources has continued to develop the BDRS and implement citizen science solutions for a wide range of clients.

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Biodiversity Snapshots

Piers Higgs — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 06:54:03 +0000

The Biodiversity Snapshots project was implemented by Gaia Resources using our BDRS system, with a custom mobile tool developed for the project. This project aims to assist students and teachers to field trip and report on their local fauna, across a broad range of environments in south-eastern Australia, including urban, bushland and coastal areas. Gaia Resources initially developed this under the auspices of the Atlas of Living Australia, and then went on to provide additional support to the project, including helping prepare presentations for different conferences (such as the Australian Association for Environmental Educators, as outlined in this blog post).

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Climatewatch

Piers Higgs — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 07:13:27 +0000

Gaia Resources was contracted to provide a system for the emerging ClimateWatch project back in 2009. As part of this, we started the development of the Biological Data Recording System (BDRS), an initiative that went on to win awards locally and nationally. In the early days of ClimateWatch, Gaia Resources provided a range of services including software development, web hosting and went on to support other development groups working with Earthwatch to ensure that the longevity of the data in ClimateWatch was preserved.
In 2017, we were (re-)engaged by Earthwatch under an Inspiring Australia grant to continue the development of the ClimateWatch project with a refresh of the web site and mobile apps.

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