Research data on cellphones

At the recent e-Biosphere 09 conference much of the discussion was centered around the self-satisfied view that we are all finally getting biodiversity information and analysis tools onto the web. At that point, it's implied, they're really available to everyone.

In the so-called Looking to the Future session, there were two speakers. Townsend Peterson from University of Kansas gave us a pungent reminder that we really ought to be prioritizing research-quality data for the web. Crappy information, whatever its quantity, isn't going to get us very far.

Town was followed by Stella Simiyu, BGCI/SCBD Programme Officer for the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation, IUCN ESARO in Nairobi, Kenya. Her message was a bit starker: it's delightful to think that putting things on the web is a step forward, but that only applies if you have an Internet connection. Kenya (by and large) doesn't, and that's common to much of the developing world. Ironically, of course, it's the developing world where most biodiversity exists and needs to be measured and studied.

Having visited Kenya, I can understand what she means. There's theoretical Internet connectivity (Internet cafés are scattered about), but the speed is about 1200 baud. That's not an exaggeration, but my considered estimate. Try reading GMail sometime on a PC with a 1200 baud connection. Odds are you can't even get a connection that slow. If you did, you'd never do it again.

So my one-line summary of those two really enlightening talks was: Get research grade information onto cellphones.

Cellphones? Yes, cellphones. Kenya (and much of the developing world) doesn't have real-world Internet connectivity, but cellphones are wall-to-wall.

That made me start to think practically. Cellphones are everywhere, but cellphone connectivity isn't completely ubiquitous. What that implies is that we should start thinking about using smart phones that can run small native apps with small local data stores as biodiversity tools.

The kinds of things that could be put onto those devices could include interactive taxonomic keys, species data collection apps (including images and geolocating), geographic measurement apps (again, using geolocation capabilities). And much, much more.

Lots of these ideas are being fleshed out with Internet-hosted back ends. We need to be thinking about how these apps can be designed from the outset so that they can also have some functionality on unconnected smart phones. That could be a big win.