ABI Development: The Electronic Transponder Analysis Gateway (ETAG): An Animal Behavior Observatory

ABI 开发：电子应答器分析网关 (ETAG)：动物行为观测站

• 批准号: 1458402
• 负责人: Claire Curry
• 金额: $ 31.49万
• 依托单位: University of Oklahoma Norman Campus
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-06-15 至 2020-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1458402&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: ABI; Development; Electronic; Transponder; Analysis

The Electronic Transponder Analysis Gateway (ETAG) is a software system enabling a biological observatory by providing professional data management and versatile data dissemination to a growing community of researchers who use Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology to better understand animal behavior. RFID allows for short-range wireless communication between small transponder tags and readers, and it can facilitate tracking of individual items or animals that are equipped with a tag. RFID is a mature and ubiquitous technology, familiar to people in the form of "microchip" tags implanted in cats and dogs. A community of researchers has emerged that employs RFID to track individual birds, mammals, fish, reptiles, and even insects in a wide range of field and laboratory research endeavors. For the majority of these projects, data collection, analysis, and curation are currently done by hand, which requires individual investigators to spend considerable time on data management rather than science. ETAG will transform the practices of its user community, by creating a common infrastructure based on open-source tools that will allow scientists to collect, validate, visualize, analyze, and share data and metadata in near real-time. As a result, researchers will have new capacities both for producing novel science and for sharing their work with their peers and the general public. The capacity to follow the activities of individual animals at feeding stations and nests is a powerful gateway to conversations about Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM). ETAG will provide new avenues for researchers to showcase their work and share it with the public through websites and social networking, featuring real-time updates from activities in the field. The purpose of the ETAG project is to generate informatics infrastructure for RFID-based research, and to equip the emerging user community with resources that let them get the most from their data both in terms of generating new science and performing public outreach and education. ETAG will serve as a data upload portal, a professionally curated database, and a multifaceted dissemination portal for RFID data and will also facilitate the exchange of technical information about hardware, experimental approaches, protocols, and data analysis software produced by the user community. ETAG is part of a broader initiative that will make low-cost, highly versatile RFID equipment available to the scientific community. Already, more than 50 research groups in 19 countries have employed RFID systems designed by the ETAG team to carry out data collection in field and lab settings. Improved hardware and software resources will spur even wider adoption of RFID technologies by biologists and educators. With system support for real time data exchange, ETAG will allow these users to monitor their field or lab studies remotely and respond rapidly to emerging developments or problems. In addition, a common set of Internet-based tools will make it possible for teams of biologists and/or citizen scientists to undertake studies at a continental scale with concomitant data collection at networks of field sites. Finally, the software design documents and code will all be open source, allowing scientists to form alliances with a range of engineers, web designers, and IT specialists who will help add to and maintain the ETAG infrastructure. Progress and outcomes of the project can be tracked at http://etag.animalmigration.org.

电子应答器分析网关 (ETAG) 是一个软件系统，通过为越来越多使用射频识别 (RFID) 技术更好地了解动物行为的研究人员群体提供专业的数据管理和多功能数据传播，为生物观测站提供支持。 RFID 允许小型应答器标签和阅读器之间进行短距离无线通信，并且可以方便地跟踪配备标签的单个物品或动物。 RFID是一项成熟且无处不在的技术，以植入猫和狗体内的“微芯片”标签的形式为人们所熟悉。一个研究人员群体已经出现，他们在广泛的现场和实验室研究工作中使用 RFID 来跟踪个体鸟类、哺乳动物、鱼类、爬行动物，甚至昆虫。对于大多数这些项目，数据收集、分析和管理目前都是手工完成的，这需要个别研究人员在数据管理而不是科学上花费大量时间。 ETAG 将通过创建基于开源工具的通用基础设施来改变其用户社区的实践，该基础设施将使科学家能够近乎实时地收集、验证、可视化、分析和共享数据和元数据。因此，研究人员将拥有新的能力，既可以创造新颖的科学成果，也可以与同行和公众分享他们的工作成果。跟踪单个动物在饲养站和巢穴中的活动的能力是进行有关科学、技术、工程和数学 (STEM) 对话的强大途径。 ETAG 将为研究人员提供新的途径来展示他们的工作，并通过网站和社交网络与公众分享，并提供该领域活动的实时更新。 ETAG 项目的目的是为基于 RFID 的研究创建信息学基础设施，并为新兴用户社区提供资源，使他们能够在生成新科学以及进行公共宣传和教育方面从数据中获得最大收益。 ETAG将作为数据上传门户、专业管理的数据库和RFID数据的多方面传播门户，还将促进用户社区制作的有关硬件、实验方法、协议和数据分析软件的技术信息的交流。 ETAG 是一项更广泛计划的一部分，该计划将为科学界提供低成本、高度通用的 RFID 设备。目前，19 个国家的 50 多个研究小组已采用 ETAG 团队设计的 RFID 系统在现场和实验室环境中进行数据收集。改进的硬件和软件资源将刺激生物学家和教育工作者更广泛地采用 RFID 技术。借助实时数据交换的系统支持，ETAG 将允许这些用户远程监控他们的现场或实验室研究，并对新出现的发展或问题做出快速响应。此外，一套基于互联网的通用工具将使生物学家和/或公民科学家团队能够在大陆范围内进行研究，并在现场网络上收集数据。最后，软件设计文档和代码将全部开源，使科学家能够与一系列工程师、网页设计师和 IT 专家结成联盟，他们将帮助添加和维护 ETAG 基础设施。该项目的进展和成果可以在 http://etag.animalmigration.org 上跟踪。