We used FME to automate the normally time-intensive tasks involved in the Citizen Science project MangroveWatch. MangroveWatch is a partnership between scientists that can visually evaluate the condition of mangroves in photographs and concerned citizens that are willing to collect the imagery for the evaluation. Volunteers record video of the entire shoreline of interest, and still frames are subsequently extracted from each second of this video. By noting the position of the video camera at one-second intervals (via hand-held GPS), it is possible, using FME, to automatically assign individual still-frames from the video recordings to portions of the shoreline. The time-savings, made possible through FME, has enabled MangroveWatch in Florida (USA) to greatly expand the amount of coastline that will be monitored in the future.

1. Using FME to Automate the ETL Workflow of a
Citizen Science Environmental Monitoring
Project
William L. Ellis

2. William L. Ellis
Associate Professor of
Biology

3. Transform
Citizen Science can
Ecology & Environmental Science

4. Challenges…….
• Collect informative
spatial data with
simple and readily
available technology
• Efficiently process
copious data
This opportunity brings

5. Film shoreline & Track
Position
MangroveWatch

6. The Product

7. Before FME
• Several programs used in the ETL process:
Garmin Basecamp
GPSBabel
HooTech video splitter
Excel
Several Macros (VBA), Python, PEARL
ArcGIS, and more.
• Copious intermediate data created while
processing “Staging Data”
• MUCH need for automation and expanded
accessibility.

8. Workspace

9. Inputs/Outputs
• Inputs-
• Video of Shoreline (mts)
• Converted to 1sec. Stills (jpg)
• GPS coordinates of Boat Path
• Track (Line Feature)
• 1 second Track Points (Point Feature)
• Shoreline Shapefile (Line Feature)
• Start & Stop Times (xlsx)
• UTC local time offset
• GPS vs Video time offset
• Outputs-
• Shoreline Segments & Midpoints
• Assignment of Stills to Shore Segments
• Final Images and Evaluation Sheets
• Summary Shapefiles

10. 1. Create 10m Shoreline
Segments and Midpoints
3. Create View Vectors from
each Boat Position Point
2. Import Video Still Frames &
Link to Boat Position Points
4. Identify the first
intersection point of
each View Vector on
Shoreline
5. Assign best Video
Still Frame to each
Shoreline Segment
Midpoint & Create
Assessment Tools

12. Midpoints

14. Boat Position Points

16. View Vectors

18. Sight Lines to Intersections

21. We solved the problem!.

22. FME + MangroveWatch =
• Increased Efficiency
• Increased Quality
• Increased Participation
• Increased Capacity

23. The Future
• Automatically scale viewing bracket
(done?)
• Set domains for Excel datasheets
• Incorporate automated image
classification

24. THANK YOU!
saintleo.edu | bill.ellis@saintleo.edu
http://www.mangrovewatch.org.au/