Tag: VecDyn

Eco-informatics Working Group Meeting – VecDyn

Posted on by Matthew Watts

Post by Matt Watts

Dear All

As you know, I’ve been developing the VecDyn database & and accompanying WebApp. The database will cover vector population and presence/absence data. As part of our Eco-informatics working group meeting this year, we’ll work on finalizing the database. If any of you outside the working group is interested in this, please take a look at the ‘VecDyn Meeting Notes’ below. If you would like to provide any feedback, please do so using our GitHub issue tracker   https://github.com/vectorbite/VectorBiteDataPlatform/issues

VecDyn Meeting Notes

Here are some points that I’d like to cover during the meeting, please read through them carefully.

  1. Validate the final VecDyn data collection templates / backend.

You can access the information here on the GitHub development pages here https://github.com/vectorbite/VectorBiteDataPlatform/blob/master/static/Documentation/VecDyn/VecDynDocs.md

Go to the section ‘Data Collection Specifications’. This is based on the work we did last year, but with a few minor changes and additions.

  • Does this cover all possible scenarios i. e. specific types of study types and studies conducted at varying geographic levels?
  • Note that, we’ll standardise taxonomic and geographical information using the Catalogue of Life taxonomic database and the Global Administrative Unit Layers (GAUL) database (FAO, UN). So, we only require taxon name and a location description in the template.
  • Do you think we should standardise Environmental Descriptions too? See http://environmentontology.org/Browse-EnvO. Note that by standardising something in a database, it means that one can query a specific entity and all related entities

E.g. Terrestrial environment > forest > Temperate broadleaf and mixed forests.

This could be useful for many reasons e.g. tracking environmental changes coupled with population dynamics over time, however, most datasets supplied by governmental authorities do not supply this type of data, so it would probably be limited to academic studies.

  1. We would also like you to test and evaluate the web app and accompanying documentation. Special emphasis should be placed on the procedures and usability.
  • Try to download data, go to the website http://www.vectorbyte.org and try to download a data set, are you able to easily download data etc and are the instructions clear?
  • Look at the data submission instructions under the GitHub development pages under ‘Submitting data’. Are these easy to follow?
  • You can also test the data upload facility. This part of the site will only be accessible by curators, but it would be useful if you could check it.

In this next step we will use a test site, therefore go to

https://vectorbiteonlineplatform.pythonanywhere.com/VecDynTest/default/index

log on with:

Username: test@test.com

Password: test

Go to ‘Adding data to the database’ under the GitHub pages and follow the instructions.

Is this process easy to follow, any bugs?

  1. The next steps regarding VecDyn V1s development will be to improve the front end using the D3.js JavaScript data visualisation library, we will implement features to help users to evaluate and access data visually i.e. plots and maps. Are there any features you would like to see implemented?
  2. Any other comments?