The National Pesticide Information Center has developed four mobile web applications that allow easy access to a variety of information previously unavailable or difficult to find. See how and why we developed these apps, and how you can enable access to hard-to-use datasets from a variety of devices, using techniques and technologies you may already know.

1. Kaci Buhl - NPIC Project Coordinator
Sean Ross - Supervisor for NPIC Information Resource Capability
NPIC provides objective, science-based information about pesticides and pesticide-related
topics to enable people to make informed decisions. NPIC is a cooperative agreement
between OSU and the U.S. EPA (cooperative agreement #X8-83560101).

2. Kaci Buhl, MS, is an expert in risk communication
and integrated pest management (IPM). Ms. Buhl
has acted as the Project Coordinator at NPIC since
2006 and also has several years of experience as a
pesticide incident investigator for the Oregon
Department of Agriculture.
Sean Ross has worked as the Supervisor of NPIC
Information Resources since 2001. Mr. Ross has
been instrumental in developing the NPIC
databases, desktop applications, websites and web
applications used by the public and our pesticide
specialists.

3. The National Pesticide Information Center
 Operated at Oregon State University since 1995
 A source for science-based pesticide information
▪ Toll-free phone line open 4 hours/day, Monday – Friday
▪ Expansive website available in English and Spanish
▪ Email/voice-mail response within one day
We answer questions about:
 The health effects of pesticides
 The environmental fate and properties of pesticides
 Product labels, regulations
 Pests and potential IPM strategies

4. Up to 25,000 inquiries per year
About 1 million page views per quarter

5. Translate technical information into accessible
language
Adapt each conversation to meet the needs of
diverse audiences
Use the risk framework to promote informed
decision-making
Recognize incidents and opportunities to
prevent incidents
Promote legal use practices and label
comprehension

6. About 90% of callers/inquirers are from the
general public in residential environments
The other 10% includes:
 Government agencies (155 in 2012)
 Health agencies (60 in 2012)
 Physicians/veterinarians (215 in 2012)
 Manufacturing/marketing (144 in 2012)
 Lawyers/consultants (54 in 2012)
 Master gardeners (24 in 2012)
 Environmental organizations (39 in 2012)
 And many more.

7. NPIC currently hosts four mobile web applications:
 P.E.S.T – Pesticide Education & SearchTool
▪ A tool for the public to find pest and pesticide-related
information: http://npic.orst.edu/PESTapp
 M.A.P.L. – MobileAccess to Pesticides and Labels
▪ A tool for professionals to find pesticide product-related
information: http://npic.orst.edu/mapl
 P.A.L.S. – Pesticides & Local Services
▪ Used by the public to find pesticide-related services in their area:
http://npic.orst.edu/pals
 My Repellent Finder
▪ Helps consumers find information about insect repellent
products: http://npic.orst.edu/myrepel

8. NPIC’s web applications are heavily data-driven.
 Two of the apps (MAPL, PEST) rely on data from EPA’s
publicly-available PPIS and PPLS databases.
 One app (PALS) relies on contact data built and
maintained solely by NPIC.
 One app (My Repellent Finder) relies on data about insect
repellent products published occasionally by EPA.
Quality and usability of publicly-available databases
varies widely. Finding, analyzing, and manipulating
such data into usable tools can yield valuable
information assets.

9. PPIS = Pesticide Product Information System
PPLS = Pesticide Product Label System
These data sets are available online, updated
weekly
They were not designed or maintained for the
general public
 Technical jargon, awkward file formats
 Counterintuitive logic for lumping/splitting like items
 Over 70,000 products, so the results are often
overwhelming

10. Intended for the pest control shopper
 Deciding whether to use a pesticide
 Comparing different pesticide products

11. Users get a quick, boiled down list of IPM tactics

12. Users get a product-specific search box
If standing in the pesticide aisle, they can look
up products one-by-one

13. Intended for the pest control shopper
 Users cannot search by product name; the data are
too squirrely
 Users cannot search for products by pest; there
would be too many results to be useful (over 10K)
We used our experience with callers/inquirers to
determine what would be helpful, and what
would be a hindrance.

14. Intended for professionals in the pesticide world
 Familiar with terms, sites, regulations
Users can search by product name, knowing it
may or may not work because names can be
interchanged
Users can search for pest/crop combinations,
knowing that crops/sites have jargon-laden
names

15. Show me products registered for fire blight on
apple trees

18. The master (federal) product label (pdf) is
available within MAPL
 Professionals would know that variations exist.
▪ States can add restrictions to the label, for example.
 The product label accompanying the product is the
one that is legally binding.
 Users may need Adobe installed
EPA publishes the version of
the label they accepted
 Including very technical,
regulatory language

19. In any combination, professional users can
search for products by:
 Pest
 Site (crop, or location)
 Active ingredient
 Product name
 Registrant (manufacturer)
 EPA Registration number

20. PPIS is published via EPA weekly, as a collection of
compressed raw text files, with fixed-length
records.
We developed code to automatically download,
transform, and create/insert/update tables in an
Oracle relational database.
Text files frequently contain corrupted records that
are automatically filtered out.
PPLS is published as a web page listing of PDF label
files. A custom parser was written to extract the
current product label PDF files and add them to the
Oracle table.

21. What kind of data formats have you seen and
need to work with?
 Other regulatory data?
 GIS .csv data?
 ???

22. Experience building web-based tools using
various technologies from the mid-90s through
the present.
Mostly traditional PERL/CGI scripting and Java
Servlet/JSP based.
Needed to utilize those experiences as a
foundation to efficiently move into the current
era of rich, mobile aware, products.

23. Needed to produce tools available to the widest possible
audience.
Phone and tablet technologies in transition. Android on
the rise, iPhone/iOS established, Blackberry diminishing,
Windows phone/tablets an unknown.
Browsers, both desktop and mobile, finally reaching a
basic level of maturity and compatibility so that interface
development and consistency was possible across
platforms.
HTML5 (and its various underlying pieces, CSS3, DOM
scripting, AJAX, JSON, etc.) becoming an accepted
platform.
Open source tookits became available, reliable, and
widely used, making development significantly less
cumbersome.

24. We decided the best and most efficient
approach was a combination of what we already
knew, and HTML5:
 HTML5 eliminated almost all worry about platform
compatibility.
 Continue to use Java server technology as the
supporting back-end. It works, and is known.We're
using the Apache HTTPd, with ApacheTomcat
connected to it as the servlet container to handle
incoming client requests.
 Servlets use JDBC to communicate with Oracle
RDBMS queries/procedures

25.  Servlets return data to client via JSP/HTML5/JSON
 Utilize HTML5 mobile toolkits to ease UI
development. JQuery Mobile was chosen based on
its features and established base, but other toolkits
could be used to do the same things.
 Continued some use of JSP and JSTL when
advantageous and/or easier than AJAX/JSON for
client UI. Especially when processing concerns or
volume of data caused limitations for the client
devices.

26. When users look in the app store (Apple or
Google Play), web-based apps do not appear
Some users cannot distinguish between the app
and other web pages that might be linked within
When using an external source of data, errors
cannot be easily attributed/corrected

27. http://npic.orst.edu/pals
PALS – Use this web app to find the phone
number/website for over 3000 county Extension
offices. Also, one-click dialing!
http://npic.orst.edu/myrepel
My Repellent Finder – Use this web app to find a
repellent for the right pest (mosquitoes, ticks or
both), and the right protection time (2 hours, 4, 6,
etc.)

28. Identify existing data sets for which there is
demand
Consider the target audience
Consider the limitations of the data set
Evaluate options for ‘mobilizing’ the data set
Let’s play with the NPIC mobile web apps now!

29. 1-800-858-7378
NPIC provides objective, science-based information about pesticides and pesticide-related
topics to enable people to make informed decisions. NPIC is a cooperative agreement
between OSU and the U.S. EPA (cooperative agreement #X8-83560101).