Nature inventories in Usemaps

Nature inventories are a nightmare for GIS specialists.

Why? The task seems simple: collect data from naturalists, reduce it to a ‘common denominator’, do some quick post-processing, bring it to the state required by the customer, and send it off. Done.

Unfortunately, it’s not that simple:

1. The ornithologist can only use KML, the herpetologist only GPX, and ‘the reptile guy’ brings printouts with notes written in pen.
2. Once you’ve processed the data, someone will send you the ‘missing data’ in the middle of the night, and of course there will be duplicates.
3. Once you have calculated the mileage and distances, the investment plan will change, and you will have to recalculate everything again.
4. There will always be a problem with Latin names. And you never know whether the Polish name is correct or the Latin one…
5. Once again, you receive new data that partially duplicates the previous data, and you don’t know what to do with it…

I have already seen projects that ended up with huge penalties because someone carelessly used Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V and duplicated observations. There were 20 points on the map and 40 in the attribute table. And so the document stated that there were 40 nesting sites…

 

Is it possible to help at least a little? Yes, of course, by using Usemaps.

What can we see in the film?

This project is configured for nature inventory in accordance with PKP standards. Everything that can be automated is counted automatically. After adding a point, the user selects a species from a dictionary containing Polish and Latin names. The following are added to the appropriate fields ‘automatically’:

1. railway line number
2. railway mileage
3. distance from the railway line
4. the side of the railway line on which the observation is located
5. Latin name of the species
6. Polish name of the species
7. species acronym
8. Species code
9. No. GUID
10. X coordinate
11. Y coordinate

The naturalist must enter the rest of the data himself (date of observation, method, etc.).

Most importantly:

1. editing the location of a point causes the coordinates, mileage, distances, etc. to be recalculated.
2. editing the species dictionary results in editing the Polish name, Latin name, acronym and code
3. and best of all: editing the railway line also recalculates the mileage and distance from the tracks.

Of course, everything can be done in a browser, QGIS, and via a mobile application, and finally exported to an SHP file and sent… wherever it needs to go.

Why is that?

1. To minimise the risk of errors,
2. Minimise the amount of work

 

All this without a single line of additional code, in the standard version of Usemaps. I encourage you to contact us and present Usemaps.