Producing rapid species level conservation assessments
RLGT: An Open Source project together with Kew Gardens, IUCN and ViBRANT to save species
THE PROJECT
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)manages the Red List of Endangered Species, a comprehensive source of objective, scientifically-based information on endangered species. The list has become a fundamental resource for conservationists, and has driven protective policies worldwide.
Together with Kew Gardens, ViBRANT and IUCN, we are developing the Red List Geospatial Tool (RLGT) — an open source tool to perform geospatial analysis and visualization of the Red List data.
We are excited to help create a tool to save species!
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THE VIDEO
Take a look at the video to get an idea on why this is important.
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THE CHALLENGE
The geospatial analysis needed for a Red List Assessment requires data and algorithms. We wanted to make public data repositories accessible to scientists, and provide them with interactive visualization tools to view their algorithms in action. We therefore needed to develop an intuitive GIS editor that served data from various sources and simplified geospatial exploration for end users.
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THE SOLUTION
Our Rich Internet Application was built using the latest web technologies such as HTML5. We used existing APIs to serve data from traditional biodiversity repositories like GBIF, as well supplementary resources like Flickr. Users can also upload, modify, save, and export their own data in multiple formats.
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THE RESULTS
At this stage, we have a solid foundation for a rich web-based geospatial analysis platform. The first version of the tool is already being used by scientists working with IUCN and ViBRANT. Working iteratively with these partners, we are developing a great open source tool to help Red List Assessments utilize geospatial data.
HIGHLIGHTS
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Current state feedback
RLGT makes intensive use of effects and animations to display tool status. This provides continuous feedback to the user.
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Unlimited undo / redo
All user actions can be undone and redone at any time, encouraging a trial-and-error analysis refinement.
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We had fun
We put a good amount of love in this project, and had fun too. You can try to discover our subtle Easter Egg in RLGT home page :)