BIO01_WellBeeing

Mapping to sustain the wellbeing of bees

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Inspiration

We are excited about building accessible mapping tools to help address biodiversity challenges. Learning about the challenges that bees are facing, it was motivating to design workflows that can help to connect different stakeholders and to address some of the issues that lead to the decline in domesticated and wild bees population throughout Europe and beyond.

What it does

The app helps beekeepers, and farmers to share information and support each other. It also enables local administration, and researchers to gather high quality data for monitoring the health and dynamics of bee populations in Europe. At the national and international level this information enables governments to develop legal frameworks for the successful conservation of bees.

How we built it

Based on the GISCollective open source platform, we can import data, visualize data on maps, and manually input data points. We added a feature for email notifications, as well as, a way to view data in the vicinity of a point. For that, we build on top of the existing platform using the same stack - dlang and js, with mongoDB. We also imported relevant habitat data, namely georeferenced occurrences of plant species that are food sources for bees. For this, we extended the existing import functionality of the platform.

Challenges we ran into

We did not find open data with specific information about the state of bee populations and their threats that included accurate location information. It was not easy to discover suitable open datasets for background information, e.g. landuse types. Once we had identified such datasets, we recognized that we need to expand our import functionality and need more computing resources.

Accomplishments that we are proud of

We identified a real need of the bee keeping and conservation community. Moreover, having previously developed the backbone and basic functionality of a reliable app, we could quickly and flexibly adapt and expand it to provide a digital resource that is of practical application. As a mixed team with some members knowing each other and new members joining, we quickly integrated as a team and each found their strengths and area for contributing. Not least, we are having an enjoyable time working together.

What we learned

We acquired more in-depth knowledge about challenges that bees are facing: from pathogens and pesticides to competition pressures. Through the experts and resources of the hackathon we gained a much better overview and understanding of the available open data resources and growing data repositories. We also recognized that, as a team, we all were focusing on identifying existing gaps, seeing chances and realizing solutions.

What's next for BIO01_WellBeeing

More in-depth knowledge of the practical workflows and motivations of the different stakeholders involved, especially beekeepers and farmers, so that we can tailor the application based on their needs. In this way, the use of the app is encouraged, resulting in a growing European-wide dataset of fine-scale, reliable empirical data for sustainable bee management and conservation. We also have ideas for future features:

  • add additional landuse information (from eg. land.copernicus.eu)
  • an offline-version for fieldwork in areas with low connectivity
  • integration of live flowering information (remote sensing, Sentinel-1 & -2 satellites)

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