Screenshots from Agile Cloud, a nationwide conservation database.

IntroductionFor hundreds of years, communities collected temperature data. There was no business case explaining why and no cost benefit analysis was signed off by multiple tiers of middle management. To them, it felt important and seemed like a good idea. This raw data has been nurtured and added to over many generations.

The temperature data collectors could not have imagined how useful their data collection would be in playing its part in climate change knowledge, a use of their data they could not have possibly imagined.

Today, we have a dream of replicating this thinking by building a nationwide conservation database that accurately records the ecosystems that are in our guardianship. Recording the environment, with its complexity of relationships between fauna, flora and human activity is a highly technical challenge. One we have solved.

Agile Cloud is working right now, from managing biodiversity to helping solve problems like Kauri Dieback.

Managing environmental and conservation data requires an information system that potentially will be longer lived than any database in existence. Agile Cloud has been designed to be useful today and in the decades and centuries to come, helping solve immediate conservation issues and ones not yet imagined.

Compared with other systems, Environmental data is still in its infancy. For example, accounting data has been around for 500 years, has been computerised for 40 years and been through millions of hours of refinement. Managing environmental data is a very new field of expertise, is infinitely more complex than any commerce based systems and requires a radical rethink of the relational database.

Agile Cloud is that rethink. It is the system environmental and conservation scientists have been waiting for. Having successfully solved the technical leap, we need your help to socialise it throughout the conservation community.

ContentsScreenshots from Agile Cloud, a nationwide conservation database....................................................1

Introduction.......................................................................................................................................1

The ultimate goal, unified data from different groups......................................................................2

Use of Master Data............................................................................................................................3

The ultimate goal, unified data from different groups

The screenshot above represents data from different unconnected projects unified in a common format of data. The significant achievements the above screenshot represents are.

1. Data from unrelated projects is displayed on one map.2. Data from unrelated projects use a common format, in this case the NZ Fire service’s

authoritative suburb dataset is the common polygon.3. A significant problem for scientists is knowing other data exists. This is a huge problem for

ministries, territorial authorities and community groups. This screenshot shows that users do not have to go find data. Data is made available through discovery found in the legend. Data is presented to the user at the time they may choose to use it.

4. Data is enviro-centric and stored independently of any geo-political based funding model (this is the biggest issue we find when we review environmental system).

5. Enviro-centric data allows scientists to ask questions of the data that were not anticipated.

Use of Master DataMany government departments create high quality master reference datasets that offer great value to conservation. For example;

Landcare Research are guardians of the New Zealand Organisms Register (NZOR). Groups of Territorial Authorities offer reference datasets for describing biodiversity classes. Niwa have the nationwide Weather Station data and Watershed polygons (a perfect non

geo-political non changing minimum polygon size). The problem with these datasets are they are complex and beyond the abilities of most groups and professionals alike.

The New Zealand Fire Service provide a set of polygons based on the popular view of suburbs.

There are many more reference datasets available.

Agile Cloud takes care of the complexity and maintain the master data in their centralised information system in a format that other groups can understand and use. New and existing environmental science can evolve and use these master datasets as required. For example;

Data collected in the field can immediately reference the NZOR. This allows Agile Cloud to provide a central reference of all species (both flora and fauna). For example, when Kauri Dieback was discovered, no territorial authorities had any authoritative geocoded source of Kauri in their region. Now we have established the authoritative source of Kauri.

Reporting and GIS analysisMany conservation groups, both professional and community based have skills for creating reports and working with GIS data. When it comes to using databases, the major barrier is understanding the underlying structure of the tables and fields. AgileCloud solves this problem by automatically creating a human readable database based on the exact labels used for creating the forms. Any person who understands the purpose of a form will immediately understand the human readable database.

The diagramme above shows that labels are used to describe a business process such as a Water Quality Test. These exact labels are then used to create the human readable database, which allows for groups with skills in reporting and GIS to independently develop their own reporting and GIS requirements.

Not shown but equally relevant, is that Tab names are used to create the tables. In the example above, the tab named Water Quality Test is used to name the table WaterQualityTest.