Wildlife Tracker’s User Experiences
Wildlife Tracker v0.3 in action!
Wildlife Tracker
“Wildlife Tracker” is a geo-framework dedicated to wildlife conservation that is being developed under GIS4 wildlife movement analytics. The platform offers a unique analysis of animal tracking overlaid with eco-geographical data layers to visually observe in near real-time what may be influencing the animal activities and to spatially assess their meaningful habitats. Indeed, the framework is able to retrieve wildlife tracking datasets in real-time updates from Argos satellite live-feed from Movebank. Furthermore, it has a connection to Copernicus Marine Service and can retrieve datasets of Ocean biogeochemistry and physical variables. Therefore, the movements of wildlife can be animated and overlaid with the environmental data layers as can be seen in the figure below.
Through the study of animal movement analytics and their meaningful spots (foraging areas, migration routes, etc.) as well as environmental impacts on their activities, “Wildlife Tracker” brings in the marine conservation and spatial planning values that support more effective MPAs demarcation and better government of wildlife protection. “Wildlife Tracker” aims to become a data-driven source for scientific research on biodiversity conservation, marine spatial planning, and decision-making institutions on MPAs assessment and expanded delimitation.
User Experiences of Wildlife Tracker v0.3
“Wildlife Tracker” keeps improving the geoinformatics capabilities and tailor-made user experience with the recently developed cloud geo-framework “Wildlife Tracker v0.3”.
“Wildlife Tracker v0.3” is offered as a customizable and personal cloud solution for geo-visualization, monitoring, ocean datasets, and data analytics.
User experiences of “Wildlife Tracker v0.3” are flexible with the inclusion of the following customizable features:
- Geospatial Visualization
- Create your own web maps.
- Include selected animal individuals’ tags in your study area
2. Wildlife Monitoring
- Activate an alert system connected with the user’s personal smartphone that can be configured based on anthropogenic threats or customized geofence
3. Ocean Datasets
- Overlay real-time ocean parameters like Sea Surface Temperature (SST) and Chlorophyll concentration (Chl-a) in your visualization
4. Data Analytics (in development)
- Generate up-to-date statistics based on movement analytics
- Calculate metrics such as daily traveled distances, time spent in protected areas, duration of stops with spatial-temporal parameters, and activity space
5. Accessibility
- Download your own web map configuration in sections 1, 2, 3, 4
- Upload and update it to your own personal cloud on Github
- Share your up-to-date web map configuration online to other people with your personal link
Galapagos Whale Shark Project
As an illustration of user experience practical application, “Wildlife Tracker v0.3” has been utilized for the implementation of the “Galapagos Whale Shark Project” with the aim to support the management of the Galapagos Marine Reserve and the protection of endangered marine species and pristine ecosystems. Thanks to the project support, “Wildlife Tracker” have access to live data of tagged whale sharks in the open ocean around the islands.
Then, through the “Wildlife Tracker v0.3” platform, marine scientists can customize the map and ocean monitoring data, and overlay the movements of whale sharks with Sea Surface Temperature (SST) and Chl-a concentration as a proxy for Zooplankton productivity.
This use case of “Wildlife Tracker v0.3” for the Galapagos whale shark project is presented in the following video.
If you are willing to know more about this implementation in the Galapagos Whale Shark Project, follow the next blog post.
User Experiences Development
Refining customer segments and studying their special needs to develop the platform geoinformatics capability accordingly is a crucial strategy to improve the user experience. The primary users of Wildlife Tracker are marine scientists and marine conservation institutions who have a focus on marine animal telemetry research and data-driven recommendation on MPAs management to advocate for marine spatial planning and biodiversity regulation.
In the current practices, marine telemetry research utilizes devices attached to animals to collect data. These telemetry devices (acoustic and GPS tags) are attached to a wide range of marine species and the signals from the tags are received by research vessels, buoys, and satellites. Telemetry tags not only report the animal’s tracking but also record information about the animal (temperature, heart rate, oxygen levels), its behavior (vocalizations, breathing, tail beats), and its environment (sound, temperature, salinity, light). By doing so, animals’ behaviors and their reaction to climate change and anthropogenic disturbances can be observed and used for biodiversity monitoring and marine spatial planning.[1]
“Wildlife Tracker” can improve these research and data analysis experiences by gathering all of these observations and monitoring data in one web-based application and providing the customizable assessment of combined wildlife monitoring, ocean dataset, interactive geo-visualization, and data analytics that can support the telemetry research and MPAs assessment.
In the future, “Wildlife Tracker” will keep developing user experiences and geoinformatics capabilities from users’ feedback and scientific insights. The aim is to offer a tailor-made geo-framework as a SaaS based on the specific need of our users such as movement algorithms, biodiversity monitoring (fishing pressure), environmental indicators, or the alert system and early response to the MPAs assessment for the MPAs regulators. It is the “Wildlife Tracker” mission to take the advantage of earth observation data and digital transformation to support the user experience in wildlife telemetry research on marine wildlife conservation and the assessment of marine spatial planning.
Reference
[1] NOAA. What is marine telemetry? National Ocean Services website, What is marine telemetry? (noaa.gov), accessed on 23/5/22.
