Group

Emerging Tech / Feed

Technology is changing and evolving faster than ever, and as it does, our community members are looking for the next big thing to revolutionize their conservation tech work. To chat about your favorite new tools that are just emerging in the field and discover innovations you haven't yet heard of, join this group!

discussion

Block chains and NFTs in wildlife conservation

Hello humans,I'm looking to understand more about blockchains and NFTs in conservation, any link to information will be appreciated, thank you

3 1

Hey Janet! 

We had a slightly intense discussion at one of our recent variety hour shows, which I belive @Netty_Cheruto already sent your way. But in case anyone else spots this thread and has the same question, it's here: 

What specifically were you looking to learn more about? If it's just about NFTs and blockchain in general, the work the Unearthodox team (formerly known as the Luc Hoffmann Institute) are doing might be worth having a look at. They got in contact with me recently to share their project ‘Digital Disruption and Future of Conservation NGOs project’ and the digital toolkit that has recently been launched as part of this project.

The project is focused on exploring the potential of emerging digital technologies, including blockchain, to transform conservation practices and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of conservation NGOs. The project aims to understand how these technologies can be used to benefit the conservation sector and support the work of conservationists around the world.

https://luchoffmanninstitute.org/digital-disruption-and-the-future-of-conservation/

The digital toolkit has been designed as a basic introduction to blockchain concepts and their potential use for nature conservation. It includes information and resources to help conservation practitioners understand the opportunities and challenges of using blockchain technology in their work. 

https://luchoffmanninstitute.org/digital-disruption-for-conservation-toolkit/

If you have specific questions, pop them in a reply and I'll see if someone from their team can pop in here and answer them!

Steph 

Hi Janet,

 

I've written quite a bit about this from the perspective of conservation and conservation science finance.  You can see some of the articles here www.moonjellyacademy.org and more on my LinkedIn pages.

 

LP 

Hi all,

Thank you so much for sharing the resources, these are quite insightfull

See full post
article

The Variety Hour: 2023 Lineup

You’re invited to the WILDLABS Variety Hour, our monthly community event connecting you to the exciting projects, research, and ideas that are happening in conservation tech right now. Brought to you with the support of...

0
See full post
funding

Amazon Sustainability Accelerator

Are you building a sustainability start-up and want to maximise your impact? We want to support you! We are looking for startups developing sustainability-focused products or recycling technologies that help keeping...

0
See full post
discussion

Suggestions for user research/co-design methodologies

Hi everyone, I'm wondering if anyone on here has an experience with user research or user testing for conservation technology 'products'? Please get in touch, I'd love to discuss...

13 1

Hi,

I'm the UX researcher at Rainforest Connection (RFCx). I use research methods such as interviews, usability testing, and card sorting to understand scientists' pain points and needs while using the bioacoustic monitoring platform, Arbimon. 

In terms of tools, I use Figjam for brainstorming and mapping, Notion for a research repository, Zoom for interviews, and Figma for prototyping. I'm exploring how to use ChatGPT to speed up my process too! I use it to draft recruitment emails, summarize transcripts etc. I try to use tools that are either low-cost or that RFCx already has subscriptions of. 

Since I'm a UX team of one, I also partner with University student groups/practicum courses to let UX students take on some of our projects. 

Feel free to reach out; I'm always happy to chat.

 

 

Hi @Sicily_Fiennes 

Apologies for the very late response to this thread, are you still looking for advice on user research and co-creation methodologies? I see there is a lot of support here on tools already ;-)

I would recommend running some sessions with low fidelity prototypes as early as possible, definitely before investing in any development! You can do this with a variety of tools, but paper prototypes can also be great if you are trying to compare very different concepts. You can use sketches to run more of a co-creation session, so that you encourage your users to define the data insights that they need explicitly and explore together different ways of visualizing & interacting with the information.

I normally do 1-1 interviews to define needs and identify potential barriers, before prototyping. But, you might be further ahead in the design process by now. 

If you still need some advice on defining the key use cases or the data visualization with users, I would be happy to offer a quick chat over zoom on how to go about it.

I am an independent service designer / user researcher with 14 years of experience in the tech industry, based in Europe :-)

Hope this helps!

Yanna 

Hi @Sicily_Fiennes,

Over the past several years, I have explored how to design engaging and useful tools for the exploration of audio recording to locate calls of a particular bird species (i.e. Eastern bristlebirds). I worked to understand the practices of a species recovery team, as well as their experiences trialling audio recorders and analysis. Additionally, I explored knowledge of birders and broader audiences, and how this relates to them making sense of audio recordings and broader nature media (e.g. distribution maps and photographs of birds). My methods to understand these included semistructured interviews, artifact exploration (very low fidelity prototyping), and ethnographically inspired participant-observer fieldwork. I also took some inspiration from design research approaches such as contextual inquiry, cultural/technical probes, and more. My background prior to being a design researcher was in ecology, conservation, and environmental education, so I drew from that expertise to understand a little-known bird species and the role of technology in supporting people in becoming familiar with it. Most of my work was positioned within the field of Interaction Design, publishing via Human-Computer Interaction, Designing Interactive Systems, and Computer Supported Cooperative Work outlets (i.e. rather than UX/UI). If interested in knowing more, perhaps have a look at papers I was the first author on that are listed here, and a few videos here. My research highlights the importance of understanding the situation, knowledge, experiences, and needs of different groups of people to design enticing and useful technologies that foster learning, cooperation, and integration into existing practices. In my experience, people are sometimes compelled to be more open and creative when not interacting with technologies that can be perceived as expensive and polished products. 

See full post
discussion

Deep Sea BRUVS Development

Hi everyone. Titus here from the Philippines.  We are currently working on creating a deep-sea dropcamera similar to Pau Anta's but modified for a BRUVS setup. We have most...

1 0

Hi Titus,

If the usual syntactic foam sources aren't available, an option may be to add an empty dry housing or use a larger housing for the BRUV, just to provide the buoyancy.

You can make your own syntactic foam from glass microballoons and epoxy resin, but this will require experimentation and testing.  For sub-surface buoyancy, you could also use a jerry can full of cooking oil, or a coil of polypropylene rope.

See full post
article

We need more people using Earth observation data

The role of no-code geospatial software in the fight against climate change

5 1
See full post
discussion

Interview for Technologies in Conservation

Dear Wildlabs community, my name is Nikolas and I am a Master's Student from Lisbon. Like many of you, I grew up with a great passion for the wildlife that we are surrounded...

4 7

I'd be happy to chat with you if you wanted! My expertise is within passive acoustic monitoring particularly. The Conservation Tech Directory might be useful for you in identifying relevant actors within the space.

My original background is in ecology and conservation, and am now in the elected leadership of the Gathering for Open Science Hardware which convenes researchers developing open source tech for science. I am not working on a specific piece of technology right now, but am happy to contribute some higher-level views for your interview if that helps.

See full post
discussion

Opportunity: networking, funding and more...

Calling early-career folks and innovative thinkers - the future leaders of their fields!  We have a fantastic opportunity to attend a virtual event that will...

4 0

Hi Liz,

A bit of both - we certainly have people from both sides of that equation. The event will be very multi-disciplinary and aims specifically to bring together a broad range of people!

Hope that helps,

Thanks

Alice

Super interesting! I registered immediately.

Perhaps good to know is that if one registers, it is not only to apply for the upcoming symposium but also for future ones. So even if the coming symposium is not a perfect fit, one may register anyways.

See full post
discussion

Help - Innovative ways to track elephant movement

Hi, I am working on a study to track wild elephant movement within an overlayed matrix of crop fields. We seek to understand how various landscape variables impact crop-raiding...

7 2

Why would you want to avoid alerting the rangers ?

You don't need high tech for this; elephants leave very obvious tracks and sign. 

Hi Tyler,

Would like to introduce you to Ceres Tags products

  • Ceres Tags products come in boxes of 5, 10 and 24. 
  • There are some software partners such as Earthranger, Mapipedia and possibly CiboLabs that would be able to assist you with your mapping vegetation requirements
  • Ceres Tag does not require any towers, base stations and infrastructure. This allows you to see any movements from the heard outside of their normal herd (boundary alerts), and you will not be disturbing any of the flora and fauna with infrastructure set up. 
  • For the timing you are looking at, Ceres Wild pings directly to satellite 24 times a day. For Ceres Trace and Ceres Ranch there are 4 within 24 hours. Taking into consideration, when you set up alert areas, you will get them directly to your phone/laptop via your software of choice
  • Ceres Ranch is a reusable tag that has just been launched. Use it on this project, remove the tag and then use the tag on your next project
  • The software you choose will assist with the history of your animal movements. Ceres Tag is integrated with 11 software partners and in-development with 18 software partners https://cerestag.com/pages/software-partners
  • Understanding it is a short-term project, you would be able to use Ceres Tags products without the additional expense of setting up and removing infrastructure- towers, gateways
  • With Ceres Tag, you are purchasing the box of tags and picking a suitable software to deliver the information you require. On average, a box of 10 Ceres Trace Tags, is the same as 1 LoRaWAN tower. 

 

I just came across this interesting paper in which seismic monotoring of animals like elephants was mentioned. 

This is the study refered to:

Cheers,

Lars

 

See full post
discussion

Workshop Invite: Building Partnerships between Conservation Tech and the UK Space Sector

Hi everyone, In collaboration with our partners over at the Satellite Applications Catapult, we are hosting an in person workshop to build strategic partnerships for...

3 2

Hi Steph,

If it's not too late, I'm very interested in this workshop.

Best,

V

See full post