Indicia - the OPAL online recording toolkit
With the explosion in biodiversity information systems in recent years, there is a new capacity for managing wildlife record data that did not exist previously. Coupled with the vast amount of information that is gathered by members of the public, recording schemes and professionals alike, this means there is a need to develop efficient and user friendly online data capture systems. However, the complexities surrounding such interfaces, including accurate capture and representation of spatial data, flexibility of the types of data captured, rapid data entry systems and handling the difficulties of complex taxonomies mean that developing them is a much more difficult task than first expected.
So, that's where Indicia steps in. Indicia provides a toolkit for programmers to be able to quickly assemble online data capture websites from a common set of re-usable components, custom designed for wildlife recording. In fact, we believe that once installed and after a bit of familiarisation, it is possible to use Indicia to build a new data capture web page for wildlife observations in about 20 minutes! Although primarily focused on data capture, Indicia also provides other tools that might be needed to support wildlife recording websites, including reporting, data browsing and distribution mapping.
Indicia contains many features and it is rapidly evolving so this list is ever growing. Here is a quick summary:
- A set of PHP components including drop downs, auto-complete text boxes, date pickers and map based spatial reference pickers.
- Ability to define your own checklists of species to make available for recording.
- Ability to add new attributes to capture data the way your recording scheme requires.
- Ability to set up controlled lists of terms, for example the list of sampling methods your scheme uses.
- Components for developing reports, data browsers and distribution maps.
- Access to the data via a secured set of webservices or CSV download for easy integration with other systems.
Indicia's development is being led by Biodiverse IT, is funded by the OPAL Network and managed by the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH). The project is Open Source, which means you can have the code for free, and has a high level of community involvement.
For more information, see the Indicia Project Website or the Indicia Forum.