Posts in Dataversity Public Discussion: Dataversity

The National Vegetation Survey Databank (NVS) is a physical archive and
electronic databank containing records of over 104,000 vegetation survey plots
-
including data from over 24,000 permanent plots.

Each year the NVS team produces an annual report to summarise the activities
for the year. This report describes the new data that has been archived in
NVS, significant data revisions that have been made, efforts to increase
end-user awareness, how NVS data are being used by data accumulators (such as
GBIF), international collaborations, website usage statistics, a summary of NVS
data requests and a list of publications that are based on data archived in
NVS. The report for 2016-17 can be accessed from the NVS website via the home
page http://nvs.landcareresearch.co.nz/ (see "What's new") or directly
from
https://nvs.landcareresearch.co.nz/Resources/Publications

The NVS team welcomes any feedback about this report.

Dear friend

I have changed my email address from <email obscured> to
<email obscured> as Vodafone are closing my Clear email server :-((

Please change your email address book if you wish to keep in touch

Any emails sent by mistake to this email will still reach me for a while

Kind regards

Paul Hughes

Hello

I am thinking about doing some large scale vegetation mapping for statistics.
I've been looking at using satellite data from this list of satellite data -
http://gisgeography.com/free-satellite-imagery-data-list/

Now, I know there are some indices out there like Normalized Vegetation
Difference Index but I don't know if this will tell me much about biodiversity.
It sounds like I can use open source tools to do these types of analyses like
QGIS... It could just be that it tells me if there's vegetation there or not,
if the NDVI value is high?

Does anyone have any experience mapping out vegetation biodiversity that can
confirm this assumption?

Rest of post

The National Vegetation Survey Databank (NVS) is a physical archive and
electronic databank containing records of over 94,000 vegetation survey plots -
including data from over 19,000 permanent plots.

Each year the NVS team produces an annual report to summarise the activities
for the year. This report describes the new data that has been archived in
NVS, significant data revisions that have been made, efforts to increase
end-user awareness, how NVS data are being used by data accumulators (such as
GBIF), international collaborations, website usage statistics, a summary of NVS
data requests and a list of publications that are based on data archived in
NVS. The report for 2015-16 can be accessed from the NVS website via the home
page http://nvs.landcareresearch.co.nz/ (see "What's new") or directly from
https://nvs.landcareresearch.co.nz/Resources/Publications

The NVS team welcomes any feedback about this report.

Hi all,

As part of a national meeting of NZ botanic gardens, held in Auckland on
November 3rd, we are holding an afternoon of talks on topics relevant to garden
record keeping (see list below).

We have room for a few extra people to attend. If you are interested please
contact Emma Bodley of Auckland Regional Botanic Garden:
<email obscured>

Contributed Papers Session 2: BRON* organising rest of the days sessions
1.45 – 1.50 Tom Myers (Dunedin), update on the BRON network
1.50 – 2.05 Rewi Elliot (Otari) MapStory
2.05 – 2.20 Karin van der Walt (Otari) Conservation, science and garden
databases
2.20 – 2.35 Jonathon Wilcken (Auckland Zoo) Species360 database
2.35 – 2.50 Mike McMurtry (Auckland Council) Engaging with research
2.50 – 3.05 Ewen Cameron (Auckland Herbarium) NZ herbarium network: connections
between gardens and herbaria, records and specimens
3.05 – 3.20 Murray Dawson (Landcare Research) Progress on the NZ Plant
Collection Register and cultivated plant names

*BRON: Botanic Gardens of Australia and New Zealand Records Officers Network
(BGANZ).

Regards, Tom Myers

FYI:

Coca-Abia, M.M.; Romero-Samper, J. 2016: Establishment of the identity of
Costelytra zealandica (White 1846) (Coleoptera: Scarabeidae: Melolonthinae) a
species commonly known as the New Zealand grass grub. New Zealand entomologist,
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00779962.2016.1230254

This article should never have made it through peer review! There is absolutely
no reason for the name Costelytra zealandica (New Zealand grass grub) to be
changed to Costelytra giveni! Article 75.6 (
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/hosted-sites/iczn/code/index.jsp?article=75 ) of the
International Code of Zoological Nomenclature should instead be invoked to
maintain prevailing usage of the name Costelytra zealandica, and prevailing
usage maintained until the Commission makes a ruling! This is exactly the sort
of situation whereby nobody should want the name to change. Art. 75.6 of the
Code provides a way to avoid such counterproductive changes, but it has not
been even considered in the above publication!

Stephen

Hi all,

I am helping the Open Data NZ (LINZ) folks <
https://www.ict.govt.nz/programmes-and-initiatives/open-and-transparent-government/open-government-information-and-data-work-programm/>
to get some input into new principles for open data in New Zealand using
the Open Data Charter <http://opendatacharter.net/principles/>

Their key question is: What are the potential impacts if the Open Data
Charter is implemented in New Zealand?

With environmental data in mind, I think it would be great to have some
input from Dataversity members. It is fairly well accepted that open
government data can be used for economic, social and environmental good.
What would you like to see government doing to maximise that?

Here are some ways you can participate:

• Twitters <http://twitter.com/opendatanz>
• Loomio discussion <
https://www.loomio.org/d/nRvY9XrW/impacts-of-the-open-data-charter-if-implemented-as-the-set-of-principles-for-open-data-in-new-zealand
>
• Teleconference Thursday 15 September 2016 from 12:00 PM to 1:30 PM (NZST)
<
https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/open-data-charter-teleconference-tickets-27622705255
>
• Workshop in Wellington Wednesday, 21 September 2016 from 12:00 PM to 2:00
PM (NZST) <
https://www.eventbrite.co.nz/e/open-data-charter-workshop-wellington-tickets-27691887180
>
• Workshop in Auckland Thursday, 22 September 2016 from 9:00 AM to 11:00
AM (NZST) <
https://www.eventbrite.co.nz/e/open-data-charter-workshop-auckland-tickets-27691941342
>
• reply here :).

Rest of post

The next NVS Express workshop will be held in conjunction with the NZ
Ecological Society conference in Hamilton on Saturday 19th November 2016.

For more information and to register see:
http://era2016.com/programme/workshops.html

If you have any questions please contact us directly:
https://nvs.landcareresearch.co.nz/Support/contact

Hi,

This is not intended to poke the borax but rather to provoke discussion. If I
am speaking out of turn please direct me to resources that would assist my
education :-)

Interesting. Who owns the data on the cloud ? What happens if a cloud
service shuts down or is bought out ? What happens if the terms and
conditions change so that ownership and availability change (perhaps with a
user-pays fee introduced)? Can the cloud service guarantee data integrity and
privacy? Will the cloud service do any data matching investigations or mining
of its own that are outside the terms and conditions the council undertook when
it signed up? What freedom does any cloud service have to change terms and
conditions arbitrarily? What sort of guaranteed response times from a cloud
service could be offered? What happens during data outages or services are up
for upgrade or repair ? How does that affect council business locally and
nationally? What contingencies are available if this happens ?

An alternative model might be a distributed database service that would
safeguard data but also retain ownership locally (not on a cloud) and provide a
fast , responsive service. Suppose for example that we here in HBRC, copied
our data over night to Horizons and Westland regional councils and they copied
their data to us.

Also suppose that a common raw standard for data were available which was
really, really basic. For example, groundwater, surface water quality and
quantity and air quality numeric data could all be stored in CSV format for
export. Locally a council might choose to convert that raw data into more
usable formats that offer a faster response.... but the central repository is
retained and safe. Raw data in ASCII only offers 256 choices for data
recovery so perhaps offers a better chance of recovery if a catastrophe occurs.
This works for point and time series data.

Transect, picture and particularly time series picture data or digital maps and
mapping resources that record time series change are trickier to index and
record meaningfully.
It can be done if a common robust format is adopted that is not proprietry to
(say) ArcGIS and ESRI. Perhaps data could be stored locally in an archive
folder with known file structure, each folder compressed using a generic
compressor with a very robust tokenization scheme (to allow for easier forensic
recovery if necessary) and stored offsite. The issue of a common data format
before compression remains though.

Consideration might also be given to safe storage of important scripts or tools
built to manage data for the organisation, in event that a complete recovery
operation is required.

The common issue here is the need for a common protocol for each data type that
is as robust and simple as possible. The reason for this is three fold:

[1] It is easy to convert data in it's rawest form to a new purpose if the
methodologies
of presentation change or the "software of the day" uses a different
format. Local
councils can still present that data in any form they need, but the
original data is
safe.

[2] The raw data can be read across all formats for all contributing
organisations.

[3] If Open Data is an ideal, then any council could read any data stored in
this
manner simply by converting it into a format useable by their local
system.

Lastly a wider application here is for Emergency Services that might need
access to data and/or maps. Coordination could be done by local
representatives on each council. Because of the distances between the backup
sites it is unlikely that a single catastrophic event could take out all sites.

The negatives to this are (not exhaustively):

[4] Capital cost for all councils involved in this increases as they manage
their existing
resources as well as additional resources to safeguard other councils
data.

[5] Data traffic will increase hugely (though what about incremental backups)

[6] Other ?

My two cents. Interested in any comments.

Kind regards,
Grant Upchurch

Hi all,

We are at the beginning stages of developing a public API to Te Papa's
Collections Online. We're aiming to have an internal prototype by mid 2016 and
some kind of public version in 2017.

Our intention is to make available data from the Collections Online website
http://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/ including:

* Metadata about Te Papa collection items and specimens
* Topics & stories about items, people, etc.
* Authority data - names, places, taxa...
* Links to collection media, including licencing details (images, video, etc.)

We'd be interested to hear from devs who might be interested in using this kind
of API in the future.

If you'd like to help, here are some initial questions to help our project
scoping:

1. Usage - What kinds of things would you use the API to build? e.g. links from
your own items to related Te Papa items, 'big data' processing of images.

2. Environments - What technical environment(s) might you use? e.g. real-time
Javascript calls from a web page, deep analysis using Python on local machine.

3. Data formats - What is your most preferred metadata format and why? eg.
JSON, XML, turtle, XML, JSON-LD.

4. Any other thoughts/requests?

You can reply here or email me directly: <email obscured>

As we progress through the development we may well have more questions and hope
you'll be able to help!

Cheers,
Douglas Campbell
Te Papa Digital

I just found out about this tool, which seems like it could be the equivalent
of the Common Web Platform for open data, or at least spatial & environmental
data. It is not the only such framework around, but given such tools are
available, do they provide a sensible way forward for NZ?

Consistent with INSPIRE & GEOSS standards, based on free, generally well proven
components, designed for cloud deployment, this could provide an easy entry
point for central, regional, local government agencies as well as other
institutions developing an open data capability in house.
A tool or framework like this one, if not actually this one, could reduce costs
& implementation issues for the many NZ institutions or agencies that are all
currently (re)inventing the same sort of thing in house, much as the CWP has
done for website development & maintenance.
http://sdi4apps.eu/
And, of course, using a shared framework brings the added bonus of ensuring
data & systems interoperability.
Cheers

Brent Wood

The National Vegetation Survey Databank (NVS) is a physical archive and
electronic databank containing records of over 94,000 vegetation survey plots -
including data from over 19,000 permanent plots.

Each year the NVS team produces an annual report to summarise the activities
for the year. This report describes the new data that has been archived in
NVS, significant data revisions that have been made, efforts to increase
end-user awareness, how NVS data are being used by data accumulators (such as
GBIF), international collaborations, website usage statistics, a summary of NVS
data requests and a list of publications that are based on data archived in
NVS. The report for 2014-15 can be accessed from the NVS website via the home
page (see "What's new") or directly from
https://nvs.landcareresearch.co.nz/Resources/Publications. The NVS team
welcomes any feedback about this report.

Kia ora Dataversity members. I have been asked to post this sad news to this
group.

Over the weekend John Sawyer passed very unexpectedly on Mull, Scotland. John
and his partner Karlene moved to Edinburgh 18 months ago. I am sure the people
on this forum would know well John's passion for data and mapping. In fact his
new job in Scotland was as the CEO of the National Biodiversity Network
(http://www.nbn.org.uk/)

John's last day was spent botanising and had been with a lichen expert who
confirmed a new species for the island and John was pretty happy about it. He'd
also learned the hazel wood forest in the gully below his family's house was
more ancient than he thought and so more precious to him. That afternoon he had
also started fencing it off. He passed away over night, Saturday afternoon our
time, the day before he was to be a speaker at a biodiversity day on Mull he
had organized.

If you have any memories of John you want to share with his family, or for his
funeral service I am happy to send them to his partner, Karlene, who has
expressed that she and John's family want John's NZ life and conservation work
to be honoured alongside his more recent achievements in the UK.

Send them to me asap. Bec Stanley
<email obscured>

Rest of post

Hi all,

You may be interested in this event over 6 to 8 November, organised by Landcare
and
Callaghan Innovation <http://www.naturehack.nz/ <http://www.naturehack.nz/>

It’s a hackathon where creatives and coders make web services and apps around
natural heritage. Intriguingly, it takes place at a unique and secret location.

Dan

—
Dan Randow
Collaboration Wrangler
http://randow.co.nz <http://randow.co.nz/>
+64 27 431 4928

Rest of post

Hi Dan,

We are just starting to use it throughout our wider Unit (about 6 different
teams) as part of improving our data management. I am not aware of anyone else
using it yet, but I know Jono has shown it to people in other Councils. Not
sure what the intentions are there though as I have not dealt with them
directly.

Cheers,
Briony

Rest of post

Hi Briony,

With apologies for taking FOUR months to reply… that
<http://dataversity.org.nz/rpost/fuKNuPOiwBywnbGw77slA> looks really awesome!

How is your use of it going?

Is anyone else using it?

Dan

—
Dan Randow
Collaboration Wrangler
http://randow.co.nz
+64 27 431 4928

Carl Wezel of DMS NZ gave a presentation on Open Source & Open Source GIS at
ALGIM (Association of Local Government Information Management) earlier this
year.
In the last year or so DMS has run several NZ training workshops on the Open
Source QGIS application (and related applications, such as their Intramap &
ROAM tools) which have been very well and widely attended - with central/local
government, research, NGO's and the business sector all represented.

They are actively contributing to a process I am watching with great interest,
that I call "Democratisation of GIS" -

Many years ago, in a land not so far away, people used to write documents on
paper, which were made legible & spell checked by a technical expert called a
typist, often working in a pool of such experts, providing a service to
organisations. Typewriters became (large & expensive) word processors, then
with the advent of PC's & tool like Wordstar, Wordperfect, & the new kid on the
block, MS Word, the concept of a specialist pool providing such a service
became redundant - anyone & everyone can now do their own (with varying levels
of competence) at minimal cost.
GIS is currently undergoing the same transformation - from a specialist service
pool using expensive tools supporting an organisation's GIS needs, to a
standard desktop piece of software that anyone can install & use (also with
varying levels of competence). I believe QGIS is at the forefront of this
change, helped along by businesses such as DMS.

The presentation lists a number of agencies in NZ making serious use of Open
Source - & the UK Govt CIO's statement about Open Source being the preferred
way forward. It also covers synergies between open source and open data - and
how many of NZ's Open Data initiatives are powered by Open Source.

A PDF of the presentation can be downloaded at
http://www.mapsolutions.co.nz/blog/24-algim-gis-conference-2015
Cheers,
Brent Wood

Hi all,

Here is an announcement that Alison Stringer just made in the Open Govt
Ninjas group <http://groups.open.org.nz/r/topic/3ybS5nxI2dQJAUTSNcwh2D>

Rest of post

Biodiversity data people may be interested in this event:

Open Source // Open Society
16 & 17 April 2015 in Wellington
http://www.opensourceopensociety.com/

OS//OS will bring people together from diverse sectors to explore how open
approaches are being used in technology, government, business and education.

I expect that the wide view taken by this event will highlight how challenges
similar to those faced by biodata people are being met in other areas. It will
put the work of linking environmental data and its community into the context
of connected data and communities in all domains working together to improve
the world.

I am certain that the stories you have to share from the biodiversity data
world will be of intense interest to people from other domains.

Dan

—
Dan Randow
Collaboration Wrangler
http://randow.co.nz
+64 27 431 4928

For those wanting to make effective use of the free environmental and spatial
data being made available by institutions such as LINZ, DOC, Landcare Research,
NIWA, Statistics NZ, etc, (not to mention international resources such as OSM,
NASA, WMO, ...) without buying into expensive commercial GIS software, there
are several options, including the use of the world's most popular Open Source
GIS application, QGIS.

QGIS ibecame a core part of NIWA's Open Data policy, after it became obvious
that providing open data, without tools tools enabling effective data reuse was
a somewhat shortsighted approach. Which in turn led to the realisation that
providing some help in using this software is also important.

NIWA & DMS have recently offered low cost QGIS workshops for anyone interested,
and there are many online tutorials and other resources. NIWA is also hosting a
local QGIS User Group, which helps NZ'rs getting started with QGIS, & now has
more non-NIWA users than
staff.https://teamwork.niwa.co.nz/display/NQUG/NIWA+QGIS+Users+Group

A new resource is the self paced, free, online QGIS training offered through
the Canvas Network, starting
Monday:https://www.canvas.net/browse/delmarcollege/courses/introduction-to-geospatial-technology-1

Cheers,
Brent Wood (& yes, I do work at NIWA :-)