A mobile phone may be all you need to take part in a data gathering exercise. In an effort to crowdsource information for databases, and encourage citizen participation in biodiversity conservation, voluntary organisations and academic institutions have come together to organise workshops on the use of free and open source software tools and mobile applications to document the city’s vegetation.
City-based voluntary organisation Care Earth Trust has joined hands with the International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad, and Open Source Geospatial Foundation-India to hold the workshops for citizens, professionals and students.
V. Prem, a GIS analyst, who took part in a workshop held recently in the city, said earlier, data collection of the tree cover was done primarily using data sheets and GPS mapping. “Now, we just need to download open source software applications like odk collect on mobile phones, use digital data sheets to survey tree cover and feed details of the particular tree and location. The application of GIS and remote sensing was also part of the workshop,” he said.
Empowering citizens
The concept behind such workshops is to empower citizens in the use of open source software, which is freely available and can be downloaded to collate macro-level data. S. Narendra Prasad from Open Source Geospatial Foundation-India said such workshops aimed at imparting knowledge to residents and the student community on recording data pertaining to biodiversity.
While proprietary software may have limitations, open source software tools would provide the freedom to add and improvise the information.
Care Earth Trust plans to hold such workshops periodically to reach out to more people, particularly the student community. Its managing trustee, Jayshree Vencatesan, said such efforts would help pooling data. “We need technology to bring in more people to collate data and this would be an appropriate means to crowdsource data gathering. We have to identify a platform to share the data, be it government agencies or academic institutions,” she said. People can find more information on www.osgeo.in.