Presentation given at the Collaborative by Nature event (#gecoenv) in Cardiff on 11th November 2011.

1. Nature Locator
http://leafwatch.naturelocator.org/
Dave Kilbey – Project Manager

2. The Problem

4. The Concept

5. How the app works
• Users take a photo of a horse chestnut leaf
• The photo is GPS tagged by the phone
• A damage score is assigned by the user (0 = no
damage 4= more than half of leaf is mined)
• The ground cover beneath the tree is assessed
• The record is submitted to us

6. Some Stats
• 12,000 downloads between 1st July & 1st October (2011)
• 5200 records uploaded, of which most were valid
But opening these things up to the public…..
• 2 bottoms
• 1 image I’m still trying to forget
• 1 nine-year old’s birthday party
• Several naked… feet
• Other miscellany defying easy description

7. Public Involvement
• Opens up a world of potential
• Puts at least one potential “recorder” in
nearly every 10K square
• Means that the questions you ask need to be
unambiguous and carefully thought out
• System open to potential abuse
• Results will need some form of moderation

8. NBN Map of Distribution
• National Biodiversity Network
• Cameraria ohridella

9. Distribution of records received
Standard Pin Map: Shows Heat Map: Shows density of
distribution of records records received
received

13. Validation Leaderboard
• 300 participants and
rising
Go on Andrew, only
another 4040 records
to go……

14. End of Season Results Map

15. The Lowdown
What it cost Benefits it brought
• £65,000 JISC grant • “Accurate” crowd sourced
• fEC £120,000 data
• Public engagement
• 9 months with a team
consisting of: • c. 6 X the data generation of
previous year using website
– 2 programmers
alone
– 1 designer
• Increases scope and reach
– 1 project manager
of projects
– 1 usability expert
• Publicity and enhanced
– + 2 biologists in steering
public awareness
group

16. The Future
• We are looking into refinements and
improvements
– Enhanced data handling (backend)
– User feedback
– More platforms
• We are actively looking into developing it as a
service
• Invasive spp, biological survey and beyond

17. Questions??
dave.kilbey@gmail.com