Right Whale Photo Id

Project Planning09/28/2011

Identification of North Atlantic Right Whales Part I

• Each individual id’d by callosity pattern on the top of the head

• Callosity are made of Cyamids, a.k.a. whale lice

Identification of North Atlantic Right Whales Part II

• At two years of age the callosity pattern stabilizes enough for identification

• Scaring also used for identification

Data Used for Modeling • Life expectancy

– Natural life expectancy unknown• practical life age before accidental death 50 years(?)

– Closest living relative Bow Head Whales• some data suggests 200 years

• Timing reproductive cycles– data has been variable between 2-5 years for reproductively active individuals

• Determining home ranges of individuals– The range of North Atlantic Right Whales is from Nova Scotia to north Florida– One juvenile found off the cost of Europe

• Social interactions between individuals– other species are show to be un-speciated sub-groups

• Do not inter breed• Sometimes called cultures• Orcas (Killer Whales)• Bottlenose dolphins

Threats to Right Whalesthe Urban Whale

• Ship strikes– Feed and breed in major commercial cargo lanes

• Fishing nets and floating lobster lines– Slow moving and skim feeding hooks in mouth, on callosity, and around

fins• Toxins

– Most females never give birth• Possibly caused by toxins

• Food scarcity – Limited copepod supply – Inhibits pregnant females coming to term– Previous concern almost now females gave birth– Last few years record calf count

Problem

• Thousands of photographs taken every year • A photograph commonly has multiple whales • Each whale matched against online catalog• Each photograph is usually of poor quality– Bad exposure– Poor animal positioning positioning– Variation in an animal’s scares– Automation of matching has not worked

Sample Photos Used for IdentificationBest available photos of RW 1012

Concept

• Provide a mechanism for the crowd to help researchers id North Atlantic Right Whales– Researchers upload pictures to website – Uploaded pictures shown to crowd for id– Website references pictures in online catalog to

give side-by-side view– Crowd proposed matches reported to Researcher

Proposed Implementation

• Service hosted on Google Appengine • Written in Java & GWT• Backend written in Guice dependency

injection framework • Database using Google Big Table database

Development Environment• Eclipse Helios or Indigo IDE

– Google Eclipse plug-in • Google Appengine support• GWT support

– Subversive Eclipse plug-in • Subversion support

– Mylyn w/Rally Connector• Rally support

• Google Code – Subversion source control– Wiki for development instructions

• Rally Community Edition (not yet approved by team)– Agile Project Planning – User Stories– Tasks– Iterations– Defects

• Teamcity – Automatic and scheduled unit testing– Automatic and scheduled regression testing

Team Roles and Responsibilities• Fazle Khan

– Team Lead• SPMP

– QA Lead• SQAP

– Cale first draft

• Cale Sweeney– Frontend Lead

• SDD-Frontend– Requirements Lead

• SRS

• Mina Botros– CM Lead

• SCMP– Backend Lead

• SDD-backend

Team

Team LeaderFazle

Backend LeadMina

CM LeadMina

Requirements LeadCale

QA LeadFazle

Frontend LeadCale

Managerial Process

• Weekly meeting after class• Meeting agenda prepared and distributed before by

Fazle• Meeting minutes prepared and distributed after– Rotating reponsibility

• Cale• Fazle• Mina

• Individual weekly activity report submitted– Reports compiled into a single report by Fazle

Configuration Management• Formal documents

– stored in subversion under /doc/Configuration_Management/<name>– Each version will have the name N-N, corresponding to the N.N of the

document– Only the document owner can make changes– Changes by non-owners sent via email

• Meeting Minutes– Stored under /doc/Meeting_Mintues– Check in by the meeting’s mintue taker

• Weekly Report– Individuals reports checked under /doc/weekly_report/<name> by the

individual– Compile reports checked stored at /doc/weekly_report

Questions?