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CENS is comprised mostly of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering faculty and graduate students, collaboratively developing:

• Technologies (hardware but mostly software)

• Systems (software and statistics)• Applications (ecological and social)

And creating programmable, distributed, multi-modal, multi-scale observatories to address compelling science and engineering issues.

What's Invasive! and Project BudBurst

Using mobile phones for citizen science environmental data collection

Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS) @ UCLA

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Leveraging the millions of visitors to the U.S. National Parks, we have developed a smart phone + website system with the National Park Service to help combat the spread of invasive species. Visitors “geo-tag” photos of invasive weeds and pests and the app automatically sends them to the database.

What’s Invasive! – Invasive Plants and Animals

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(1) One, Few, or Many is the amount of invasives you see.

(2) Photo on/off and Note on/off to add a photo and notes to your observation.

The phone has automatically selected the appropriate weed list based on your location.

(1) One, Few, or Many is the amount of invasives you see.

(2) Photo on/off and Note on/off to add a photo and notes to your observation.

The phone has automatically selected the appropriate weed list based on your location.

Top invasives are sent to the phone, based on GPS location

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What’s Invasive! – UCLA Classroom Fieldtrip

Students were provided with 15 Android cell phones and walking in pairs over short sections of the canyon. They mapped a total of 369 locations for the invasive Arundo donax (Giant reed) corresponding to 267 new observations (relative to the previous NPS survey) and 102 repeat verification observations.

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Challenge: What’s Invasive! Participation

1. Reports of invasives are mostly tied to “events” rather than to constant data collection by hikers.

2. About 10% of the registered users actually collect data.

3. An increase in data collection does not seem to be tied to the release of the iPhone app but the establishment of new areas by park officials and new registrations are.

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BudBurst Mobile – U.S. Plant Phenology Watch

Project BudBurst – Citizen Science Education & Outreach

Project BudBurst, since 2009, has over 12,000 participants, monitoring individual plants and collecting “survey” phenology data.

• Participants can view the progress of their own data collection relative to historical data, mapping, etc. is available on the web.

• Shared, “community” plants add a layer of social activity to participation.

Categories of plants are divided:

• At the top, are regular, BudBurst plants that are observed daily.

• Next, are Occasional Observer plants that are shared with the community and “survey”- like.

Categories of plants are divided:

• At the top, are regular, BudBurst plants that are observed daily.

• Next, are Occasional Observer plants that are shared with the community and “survey”- like.

Lists of plants, both nation-wide and local, based on GPS,

are availableEach plant monitored is listed with its site and progress information.

Each plant monitored is listed with its site and progress information.

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Opportunity: BudBurst Mobile and Games

Floracaching is a game, like geocaching, but participants look for plants and capture phenology data.

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• Data sharing among systems in an environmental network.

• Back-end data analysis for real-time models with feedback.

We are working with Invasive.org and other networks to provide easy access to and extensive broadcast of What’s Invasive! data

We are combining BudBurst Mobile data with external data sources and models to create daily, real-time feedback and predictions.

Next Steps for Advancing Mobile Citizen Science

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• Data sharing among systems in an environmental network.

• Back-end data analysis for real-time models within games.

We are working with Invasive.org and other networks to provide easy access to and extensive broadcast of What’s Invasive! data

We are combining BudBurst Mobile data with external data sources and models to create daily, real-time feedback and predictions.

Local Plant Lists as a Location-Based Service