For a handful of our non-technical team members, workshops such as those hosted by She Codes provide a great environment to expand their understanding of web development.  She Codes hosts one-day weekend workshops for women and non-binary individuals to introduce them to coding. Sophie Darnell wrote about taking advantage of a virtual She Codes workshop at the beginning of the pandemic. Although these classes are outside of normal working hours, they are recognised as work hours by the company. 

While as a company we fully embrace continual learning, we also enjoy giving back and fostering the learning of others. Throughout 2020 and 2021, Software Engineer Sarah Aldrich donated many evenings and weekends to mentor for the She Codes Plus six-month bootcamp. 

Our team at Gaia Resources are a pretty diverse bunch, and the ways we prefer to learn and communicate are pretty diverse too. We have a broad range of skills and an amazing cohort of colleagues who are happy to share what they know. So sometimes when we want to learn a new skill, the first place to start is with each other.

Gaia Resources prefers to use open source software in our solutions, where appropriate (Read Chris’s introduction to open source software here). One open source solution that we have implemented for our clients is Drupal. Drupal is a Content Management System (CMS), available to download for free. One of our Senior Developers, Brianna Williams (Bri), has been using her knowledge and experience with Drupal to bring open source content management systems to our clients. One of the most recent of these was the delivery of the Collections Online solution for the Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) late last year. She is also a member of the Drupal Brisbane Meetup group, sharing ideas and challenges with other developers using the platform.

Bri realised that other team members (mostly non-technical) were interested in expanding their knowledge of CMSs but struggled to find solid foundational beginner resources. Having had positive experiences using Pantheon hosting on Drupal projects, and benefiting from their online resources, she decided it would be a good place for the team to start. While the resources themselves are self-paced and online, it can often be intimidating if you are starting ‘from scratch’ to complete them by yourself. If you encounter an issue, there may not be many ways to solve it in real-time, and it is harder to confidently complete. Bri recognised these barriers to entry and arranged a session for interested team members to work through the training together, with a dedicated chat line for her to help out anyone who got stuck as soon as possible, and for us all to learn from each other’s mistakes.

Voon-Li Chung leading an Arduino lesson

Once a month, all Software Engineers meet to discuss tools and practises, to stay abreast of what is happening in the field. In these meetings we also share the outcomes of personal PD projects and discuss avenues for future ones. Recently the Software Engineers have embarked on a bit of group PD. One of our mobile developers, Voon Li Chung, kindly volunteered to run Arduino workshops for all interested parties. Upon completion of official business, the Software Engineering meetings turn into hands-on lessons where Voon-Li guides us in a build. Each lesson is designed to build on previous lessons and to demonstrate specific capabilities of Arduinos. Starting with turning on light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and making them flash, we have progressed to learning about H-Bridges that will eventually enable our robots to move both forward and in reverse.  

It is great to learn with a team who are so interested in taking on new challenges and discovering new solutions. Whether we are learning from each other or teaching each other, Gaia Resources has successfully fostered an environment where we are all comfortable exploring new things.

If you want to be a part of a team that values learning or if you have something you can teach our team, reach out! We would love to hear from you. Reach out directly via info@gaiaresources.com.au or connect with us on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook. 

Sarah

The post Learning Never Ends: Professional Development at Gaia Resources appeared first on Gaia Resources.

FOSS4G is short for ‘Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial’ – it’s a great convergence of people who are passionate about open source software and open geospatial data, and want to share their experiences. It’s safe to say we all see the business value and the opportunities for innovation and for creating good in this world through sharing and collaborating.

Maybe you haven’t heard the terms open source or open data before, or perhaps you’ve heard them in comparison to Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) – or proprietary – products? In either case, let’s have a look at what a few of these terms mean:

• Open source software is where the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Often source code will be collaborated on and shared through public channels like GitHub.
• Open Data is the concept or commitment to make data products freely available to everyone to use and republish as they wish, without restrictions from copyright, patents or other mechanisms of control.
• Open API is an open Application Programming Interface specification for describing, producing and consuming web services. It allows organisations to open up controlled gateways into their systems, and encourage third parties to build integrations into their own applications.  

There are some truly massive open source software projects out there that are breaking new ground and really challenging the COTS providers for functionality and benefits. In the spatial realm QGIS desktop software and PostGIS relational databases provide free and open source equivalents to COTS products.  In statistics, we make use of products like the R Project, and in software engineering you see Python, PHP, and other open source programming languages everywhere. Even on relatively closed software products, there is a trend to create open APIs so that systems can more easily integrate and exchange data.  

A nice example of QGIS and Python development is what Tom will be talking about at FOSS4G in relation to our involvement with the Northern Australian Fire Information program. The NAFI website has for several years built up an impressive array of fire related data products and services that support land managers (see our previous blogs). For the NAFI QGIS plugin, we leveraged the QGIS open source plugin framework to create a quick access tool for the folks who rely on that desktop package for fire management activities.

The NAFI QGIS plugin places a quick layers panel to the left for easy access to data layers.

We are also close to releasing another plugin that streamlines fire scar mapping tasks for Bushfires NT staff in the Northern Territory using Sentinel imagery from the European Space Agency (another free data product).

It’s not just feature parity and lower price that makes these open source products appealing—it’s also the flexibility and community-driven development opportunities they offer that allow organisations to build their own software interfaces, plug-ins, models and extensions to tailor functionality to meet real business needs.

Increasingly, government agencies publish “open data portals” like data.gov.au as an entry point to gaining easy access to FAIR data extracts and web services – by FAIR we mean data which meet principles of Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reusability. The Open Geospatial Consortium standardised web service formats (e.g. WMS, WMTS, WFS) these agencies publish to are a lynch pin in so many spatial systems out there. They recognise that FAIR data and open source software availability can kick start and accelerate a range of innovative products and applications they could only guess at.

If you are in a business evaluating software solutions – and I have been on both sides of that supplier-buyer fence – your decision process likely involves evaluating against a number of business risks. I would say that a well-supported open source product could have a lot to offer in terms of reducing those risks:

Other questions worth considering are: how many users are there actively using the product? How often is it updated? Do others find it easy to learn and use? What skills do you need to build on it? All the same questions you might ask of a COTS product, to be honest.  

When you make the choice to use a product like QGIS or to build your own open source solution, know that there is a whole community out there (including us!) willing to lend a helping hand. For whatever challenge you have, chances are that there is someone that has tackled something similar, and has shared a solution or developed a script or plug-in, where you can save time and potentially add value back. 

I really hope everyone heading along to the FOSS4G conference has a great time, and comes away with a basket full of ideas and new connections in their open geospatial journey. If you’d like to strike up a conversation, please feel free to contact me or hit us up on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook.

Chris

The post Open source software and open data appeared first on Gaia Resources.

QSA in collaboration with the Digital Archives Project team launched the new Archives integrated system to the agencies and public in June last year.  Gaia Resources’ collaboration and specialised team oversaw the Archives biggest change in 20 years. 

The new system features 3 specific systems, Archives Space, for the archivists; Archives Gateway for the Agencies and Archives Search for the customers, agencies and public.

Archives Search is now an easy to use, dynamic system that displays and searches records that are managed via Archives Space system.  

Reaching out to a few of the many users of the new system, they were happy to share their enthusiasm:

• Multiple researchers have indicated that they love that they can create and manage their own account  
• They can order records from home ahead of a planned visit to the Reading Room
• Favourite searches can be saved and all their request history displays in one easy to access place
• Researchers like that they can download an image or request a quote for a digital copy of an image directly from the catalogue and can do this from home
• The catalogue is user-friendly and a lot of things are easier to use now
• Researchers don’t need to use the QSA search terminals.  They can now bring their own laptop in and order directly from there – this makes it easier for new records requests during a visit and is more efficient, particularly if the research terminals are all in use and the researcher would otherwise be waiting for someone to finish before they can order more records
• There is excitement about the ability to tag records and that research communities can now do this and have the benefit of another way to search
• Improved search functionality, such as being able to ‘limit to’ when searching really helps filter their searches. In the case of one very experienced researcher, he has now found records he has never found previously due to being able to manipulate searches using the filters and facets
• Being able to have agency delegates see their agency records is a great feature
• Very pleased to see the Australian Series System underpinning the new Archival Management System (AMS) 
• Happy to see that function and mandate metadata is now available/available again
• The improved storage capacity in the new AMS also means it can now accommodate more documents or larger documents, including significant records such as the Colonial Secretary correspondence which were previously only available digitally on the computers in the Reading Room.

While there has been a period of adjustment for researchers who were used to the old AMS, most have adjusted quickly to the changes, while others are still discovering new features of the system and becoming familiar with the best way to engage with the catalogue. 

If  you’d like to know more, read our previous blogs, or feel free to email me. Start a chat with us via Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

Tania

The post Archives Search changing customers lives at the Queensland State Archives appeared first on Gaia Resources.

Together with some excellent partners and the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS), we will be looking at leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) tools to identify fish species, counts and other measures from underwater video footage. Tailored to the research challenges that AIMS faces, we are hoping our work will continue on to develop products and insights that can streamline marine research programs and conservation efforts.  Our focus will be to support scientific understanding of critical issues and build online tools to streamline and expand the capacity and program effectiveness.

Our team is really looking forward to getting started, and I am sure we will have an update for our interested readers in a few months time. Feel free to give me a call or an email though if this type of work interests you – strike up a conversation on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook. 

Chris

The post Counting fish – supporting research at the Australian Institute of Marine Science appeared first on Gaia Resources.

AWS Case Study

AWS Summary Slide

An extract from the case study is below:

Late last year, we answered a call from the Association of Volunteer Bushfire Brigades of Western Australia, who were seeking a partner to help develop a proof of concept mobile app and web site that would support the volunteers fighting bushfires around WA. Then, in early 2020, funding became available to develop a much more fully-featured product, resulting in the Essential Service Volunteers (ESV) app, which was launched back in April.

Bushfire Volunteers WA worked closely with us to create a smartphone app that helps emergency services volunteers register, track activities, and access local merchant offers. The app:

• empowers volunteers to track activities for medical and employment reimbursement
• enables offline use with the ability to sync data when users go online again, and
• created an app with utility for all public emergency services

Our CEO, Piers Higgs, was quoted as saying:

Our hope is that this app will make the lives of bushfire volunteers easier and be adopted broadly throughout various public service agencies across Australia. Using the power of the AWS Cloud enables us to do so with security, scalability, and cost-efficiency that would not be possible any other way.

Being an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Partner, our team chose to build the app on the AWS Cloud. Using AWS means Bushfire Volunteers WA doesn’t have to manage infrastructure or pay for more capacity than it needs, and because bushfires are largely seasonal, it’s a solution that can scale up as volunteer brigades need to use it, and then scale back down again when the needs are less urgent.

Our implementation relies on Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) to provide image and object storage, and uses Amazon CloudFront to speed content delivery. In addition, AWS Elastic Beanstalk automatically handles web app deployment, including capacity provisioning, load balancing, auto-scaling, and app health monitoring, further reducing management overhead for both Gaia Resources and the Association. The app also takes advantage of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) for foundational compute services and Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) for PostgreSQL for fully managed database service.

You can read more about our AWS strategy in recent blogs here and here and if you’d like to know more then please drop angus.mackay@gaiaresources.com.au a line, or connect with us on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook.

Alex

The post Supporting Emergency Services appeared first on Gaia Resources.

Much earlier on, YMAC had taken up a ‘data discovery and map production plug-in’ and customised it for their own environment. The tool provided an easy-to-use and time-saving interface for staff to find the mapping layers they wanted such as Statewide imagery, aboriginal sites and internal layers. It also had an excellent map production tool that automated the creation of standard YMAC-branded map outputs at various page sizes and orientations.  The change in the back-end development framework to Python 3, QT 5 and other software library upgrades meant that all those handy plug-ins we use no longer worked in QGIS 3.x versions (further info for the techies can be found on the QGIS API Documentation).

The YMAC QGIS tool (left menu bar and pop-up interface) provides a range of data loading and map configuration options. Automated map layouts (right) reflect company branding and auto map elements.

So YMAC engaged us to upgrade their tool – and my colleague Tom Lynch and I were keen to get started.

Looking back on the project, it reminds me a bit of my father’s obsession with restoring classic cars. He has a great mind for solving mechanical challenges – while playing classic blues-rock in the garage late into the night – and could see the inherent value of transforming broken-down vehicles like a ’53 Ford Truck he dubbed ‘Snoopy’ to its former glory.

My father’s prized possession – his restored 1953 Ford Truck.

For him it was as much about getting the thing running again as it was about the visual restoration, and that required a fair amount of tinkering and elbow grease.  I could never get into that hands-on mechanical work (my father found that immensely frustrating) but hey, I could still admire the perseverance and the outcomes he achieved in making these things roadworthy some 50 years after they were made.

Even though the YMAC tool upgrade was a relatively small project by comparison (and to do with software rather than gears and fan belts!), Tom and I discovered the changes ‘under the hood’ were significant. After gaining an understanding of the workflows and components to retain, it was a lot of work and testing to update the code references and verify everything worked as expected. In some cases, entire QGIS component libraries had been overhauled with new ways of creating map elements like legends and layout elements. Development took longer than expected and testing was an interesting process. With all of the work happening remotely and involving iterative test versions, the team at YMAC were very obliging in providing test data and remote connections so we could spot and iron out unexpected behaviour and glitches along the way.

In the end, we are really proud of the result and happy to see that the YMAC team have rolled out the new tool along with QGIS 3 across their business. It is a piece in the puzzle for us as consultants to help organisations like YMAC to achieve greater operational efficiencies and pursue their objective to “continue to walk together with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in a movement of the Australian people for a better future.”

“Well done to you both for getting YMAC tools 3 over the line! It’s been a long journey however both Marty and myself are really appreciative of your efforts and professionalism. We’re really excited that we can roll out the new version to all our staff!”
– Will Davis, YMAC GIS Coordinator.

If you’d want to know more about QGIS, our work in this space, have a look at our QGIS training pages, or please leave a comment below, connect with us on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook, or email me directly via chris.roach@gaiaresources.com.au.

Chris

The post Plugging into data and map automation in QGIS 3 appeared first on Gaia Resources.

She Codes cupcakes

Tracey, one of our environmental scientists and support specialist writes “She Codes was a great experience overall. I have been learning the basics of Python coding online, but the tutorials were quite dry and heavy on information. In the She Codes workshop we used a practical exercise that was both informative and fun – coding a basic video game where you guide a turtle around a screen chomping on ‘space cabbages’. Having something fun and engaging really made the learning curve less daunting and kept my focus, and each module felt rewarding as my turtle gained new abilities.”

Barbara, one of our spatial analysts said “There was a good choice of subjects – WordPress, Django, Python and HTML with CSS – and plenty of mentors to help out with problems or just to talk to. Each had a badge with their field of expertise so it was easy to find answers. I also have to mention the famous cupcakes – they were delicious ;)”

She Codes founder Kate Kirwin says “This initiative has truly created a space for women to be welcomed into the tech industry, and I’m more than pleased to announce that 40% of the women who were part of the 2019 pilot program have now secured new roles within tech”. With a combination of in-person and virtual mentoring, She Codes Plus provides successful participants with the essentials required to pursue careers in technology-focused roles. Conducted on a part-time basis, participants undertake four unique projects focussed on building web applications using the HTML/CSS, Python, Django and React.

She Codes coders in Saturdays workshop (photo courtesy of She Codes)

In our Brisbane office, Sophie and Megan attended the Brisbane PyLadies chapter last week. PyLadies is a mentorship group with a focus on helping more women become active participants and leaders in the Python open-source community. Their mission is to promote, educate and advance a diverse Python community through outreach, education, conferences, events and social gatherings. PyLadies also aims to provide a friendly support network for women and a bridge to the larger Python world.

Sophie reports that “Megan and I braved last Thursday’s meeting despite pouring rain – we were both a bit damp, but enthusiastic! We heard Toni Sefton speak on her personal experience getting into coding and Python using a less-than-direct path. She was open about the challenges in overcoming her own doubts; being willing to take a risk on this change in direction in her life despite feeling that she still had too much to learn. One of the key factors in helping her to develop her own skills was having a supportive mentor. This helped to also remind me of the importance of providing that support and encouragement when friends and colleagues show an interest in expanding their knowledge and skills in the future.

Then Bertrand Caron spoke about different approaches to writing modern Python code. While a lot of it was beyond my skill level, he helpfully provided his slides for future reference, and I am sure I will be looking back on these with interest once my skills allow it! It was great to see part of the supportive and motivated coding community learning together.”

Our team are looking out for more opportunities like this to participate and learn, so if you know of other great initiatives like She Codes or PyLadies, then please feel free leave a comment below, connect with us on Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook, or email me directly via alex.chapman@gaiaresources.com.au.

Alex

The post She {Codes} and PyLadies appeared first on Gaia Resources.

https://www.canada.ca/en/heritage-information-network/services/collections-management-systems/collections-management-software-vendor-profiles.html

The review was not meant to be an endorsement of particular packages, more an appraisal of what’s on offer so that museums could take a look at what works best for their needs.

Considering Gaia Resources does quite a lot of work in this space, I decided to take a look at this significant review and see what it might mean for our existing and future customers in the museums space.

First up, this review included the following vendors and packages:

• Axiell (Adlib)
• Gallery Systems (TMS and eMuseum)*
• Keepthinking (Qi)
• Lucidea (Argus)
• Lyrasis (CollectionSpace)
• MINISIS Inc. (MINISIS)
• PastPerfect (PastPerfect 5.0)
• Re:discovery (Proficio)
• SKINsoft (S-Museum)
• Vernon System (Vernon CMS and eHive)
• Whirl-i-Gig (CollectiveAccess)

* Note, only a survey was done for TMS and eMuseum, no product review was performed.

You can read all the detailed reviews and vendors response on the site, but as there is no executive summary (well, none that I could find), I thought I could add something to produce a summary of each vendor evaluation done by CHIN.

From my reading of the review, this was my take home for each of the packages:

Axiell (Adlib)

Keepthinking (Qi)

Lucidea (Argus)

Lyrasis (CollectionSpace)

MINISIS Inc. (MINISIS)

PastPerfect (PastPerfect 5.0)

Re:discovery (Proficio)

SKINsoft (S-Museum)

Vernon System (Vernon CMS)

Vernon System (eHive)

Whirl-i-Gig (CollectiveAccess)

It is clear a lot of work has gone into this review, and I highly recommend checking it out for yourself. Overall, the reviewers seemed to give S-Museum and CollectiveAccess the most positive reviews, but for smaller institutions something else might be more appropriate.

I can only recommend reading all the reviews for yourself and seeing what is the best fit your institution via the link at the start or contact us via email.

Morgan

The post CHIN Collection Management System review: our summary appeared first on Gaia Resources.

The technology was inspired by a need to understand more about the movements of small, migratory Swift Parrots within their winter range.  The Swift Parrot is one of Australia’s priority bird species for conservation action and is listed as critically endangered under the Commonwealth Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act 1999.

The critically endangered Swift Parrot (image source: Brett Allen)

Compared to conventional tracking methods, the Wildlife Drones approach has some distinct advantages. Firstly, their system can track up to one hundred individually identifiable animals all at the same time instead of manually tracking one at a time. Secondly, the drone and its payload delivers much more data from a superior vantage point in the air compared to conventional handheld antennae methods. And finally, the base station application that Gaia Resources developed for Wildlife Drones provides on-line and off-line mapping capabilities to visualise incoming radio frequency tags in real time. This includes the ability to download imagery tiles for situations where tracking is happening outside of mobile data range.

Conventional radio tracking technology (left) and Deb demonstrating the Wildlife Drones method (right).

Deb gave us a great wrap up on how we worked together:

“Gaia Resources did a wonderful job turning all our user interface ideas into reality.  Within a relatively short period of time we went from having a general idea of what we wanted to having a very impressive, incredibly user friendly and intuitive user interface.  This has dramatically increased our ability to demonstrate our technology to anyone who is interested.  All the feedback from customers, investors and the broader community has been overwhelming positive and we are also now thoroughly enjoying using our cutting edge technology with much greater ease.” 

Following the informative morning presentation Deb gave, there were many questions ranging from hardware options to data accuracy and limitations. One, in particular, was around tracking animals whose habitat tends to be in caves and beneath rocky ledges (like the endangered Brush-tailed Rock Wallaby) – and what we found out was that the Wildlife Drones solution is able to collect useful data to triangulate positions from multiple vantage points, meaning that the remoteness and difficult terrain is no longer a logistical constraint for trackers.

From the boardroom to the outdoors, we headed out to the West Australian Model Aircraft Sports Centre to see the drone in action. Some tags were randomly distributed in the mini-airfield and surrounding bush, and Deb piloted the drone in a flight path that involved 360-degree rotations in multiple locations around the site in order to triangulate the tag locations. It was also quite windy that day with gusts over 44km/hr, but the stability of the Matrice 210 in those conditions was pretty impressive.

The demonstrations in Perth and previously in Hobart have generated a fair bit of interest in the wildlife tracking community, and we are really looking forward to continuing to work with the Wildlife Drones crew in their journey to success. If you are interested in getting a conversation going, jump on our Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn links– or drop us a line on (08) 9227 7309, or email me on chris.roach@gaiaresources.com.au.

Chris

The post Launching Wildlife Drones in WA appeared first on Gaia Resources.

They sure do get large mossies in NSW…

I have been to quite a few of the MCAA events, starting at the 2014 conference in Mandurah where I presented on what we were planning to do with the Atlas, and then again in 2016 at Surfer’s Paradise, where I provided an update.  My attendance at this year’s one kept to my usual MCAA pattern, namely to attend a solid day of the conference to learn more about the work that people using the Atlas do, and to also do another update on the Atlas itself!

My update seemed to be well received – at least there were a few nice tweets about it (check out the #mcaa2018 hashtag for the full conference overview), and I had a few chats to people before and after my presentation.  It’s always a challenge being in the last session stream of a conference, but there was a lot to be seen on that last day – there were drone demonstrations, a range of really interesting presentations, and I think I saw a hangover or two from the dinner the night before, as well.

This year’s presentation (via Slideshare)

In my talk, I finished up with some really important success stories, and none more so than “Barry”.  “Barry” is one of the Victorian local government Environmental Health Officers, and he’s one of the people that’s making the Atlas a better piece of software, via his calls to us directly – he tells us what works, what doesn’t and what he’s having problems with – and that really helps us a lot when we’re trying to diagnose things.  We all decided when I was talking through this that we’d much rather have a “Barry” who calls frequently, with the good and the bad, than no calls at all.  So I will definitely be trying to get that #belikebarry hashtag going in the near future!

In the meantime, we’re working on a few new things with the Department of Health and Human Services, including loading a lot of historical information into the Atlas, creating linkages so that their PowerBI implementation can work directly with the data in the Atlas, and a whole new app component around ground surveillance – which is certainly the bit that interested a lot of people.  Certainly, working in this area with the Atlas has given us a whole bunch of new ways to make a positive outcome to the environment through the use of technology – something that makes the flights, driving, and all that time away from home very much worth it!

The Atlas will continue to be updated and developed over the near future so we can expect a few more updates from Chris and the team who are working on it.  In the meantime, if you’d like to know more about the Atlas, then feel free to contact me via email, or start a conversation with us via Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

Piers

The post Controlling Mosquitoes with Technology appeared first on Gaia Resources.

BioSys is an open-source standards-based data management system built specifically for biological data, built around the premise of making it as easy as possible for users to store their data.  The system has a flexible data schema model that allows users to create a schema specific to the structure of their data, and that can apply to just about any sorts of biological and ecological data.

Since the 2015 blog, we have continued to work on BioSys with DBCA and the system has had considerable enhancements and has now moved well beyond the pilot stage and is in production across a number of projects.  The project has been a model of collaboration all the way through, with staff from the DBCA (including Paul Gioia and others) heavily involved in the design and specifications for the system.

BioSys has evolved greatly since our first pilot

One of the things that most excited us about working on BioSys was that DBCA would be making the code open source and would actively be looking for collaboration with other agencies.  Earlier this year, thanks to the hard work of the DBCA team, we had the opportunity to work on a collaborative project with DBCA and the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage (OEH) for a pilot BioSys project to support their Koala survey field work.

I Spy Koala splash screen

The goal for the pilot project was to provide an end-to-end workflow from data collection in the field to OEH’s existing BioNet data repository. This involved a number of changes to the BioSys server and web system, but most excitingly a new mobile data collection tool. For the pilot project the mobile tool will only support the koala collection data schema, but it is expected that in time the tool will support any BioSys schema without need for further development. The mobile field collection tool will also be open-sourced at the completion of the project, which will then put the entire BioSys tool kit in the public domain – a great outcome, especially for a project funded by government!

UPDATE – August 2019: We’ve now finished the production implementation for the I Spy Koala project, which has gone exceedingly well, and the apps and system are now available via NSW Koala Country.

If you’re interested in how BioSys, or mobile data collection apps, could help your organisation, then feel free to contact me, or start a chat with us via Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

Andrew

The post BioSys and National Collaboration appeared first on Gaia Resources.

After several months of planning, the new MicroBlitz apps and website were launched at the School of Isolated & Distance Education (SIDE). UWA Winthrop Professor Andy Whiteley, the MicroBlitz Project Director, had a chat to Nobel Laurette Professor Barry Marshall which was broadcast in real time to a few hundred SIDE students who tuned in to a very special science lesson. Listen out for the question-time at the end some great questions and entertaining answers!

Deborah Bowie, MicroBlitz Project Manager, spoke to an attentive audience the following day at the first public meeting of the Western Australian chapter of the Australia Citizen Science Association (launched at the recent ACSA National Conference — you can read my report here). You can also follow ACSA-WA on their new Facebook page.

You can learn all about this fascinating project from the MicroBlitz web site and keep up-to-date with MicroBlitz events on their Facebook page. And then you can download the free apps for Apple iOS or Android where you can register to be a MicroBlitzer!

If you’d like to know more about how we can help you with developing a citizen science program, or how a smartphone app could improve your community engagement and scientific data capture, then please leave a comment below – or email me directly via alex.chapman@gaiaresources.com.au.

Alex

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