Picture Pollinator

Nature Intelligence Unit

Picture Pollinator

Challenge 1: Social media meets citizen science

How can we use all our extraordinary innovation in culture and

technology to participate more meaningfully with stuff that truly

matters e.g the health of the biosphere that supports us and all life?

What problem did we identify?

Lots of existing photos on

social media

People take beautiful pictures of wildlife& share their pictures on social networks.

We can monitor wildlife using these picturesBut...

1. How can we access these

images?

Twitter: by monitoring the feed

Facebook: by historical search

Flickr: by API search

Instagram: by API search

hashtags.

#springblooms #cloudspotting #woodpecker

#daffodil

#ilovedaffs #springflower #dfdl

Wild flower. Cut flower. Marathon runner.

Accessing images

Create a universal access code to allow anyone to monitor and access these images.

Based on scientific name e.g. Narcissus jonquilla = #Narcissus_jonquilla

Already done with some imageswww.jonchamberlain.com/niu

2. How do we know the metadata

is correct?

Confirming the metadata

Ask the person who took the photo to identify it.

Assist the person by using machine learning to guess species based on:

Location. Time of day. Date. What they were asked to find.

3. How can people contribute with the least effort?

Tying into existing behaviours

Using a small app or plugin for smartphone camera

Follow existing dataflows of Instagram and Twitter

Minimal extra screens/buttons/info

4. What can we do with this data?

Make it accessible

We now have a bunch of happy, unhindered people going around taking and pics of nature

using well-formed tags.

Anyone can now monitor social networks for this info.

e.g. Springwatch, NI5, NIU spellcasterAnd Scientists / Researchers

Nature Intelligence Unit

Social Media meets Citizen Science.Picture Pollinator.