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

电子应答器分析网关（ETAG）是一个软件系统，通过为使用射频识别（RFID）技术更好地了解动物行为的越来越多的研究人员提供专业的数据管理和通用的数据传播，使生物观测站成为可能。RFID允许在小型应答器标签和读取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，人们所熟悉的是植入猫狗体内的“微芯片”标签。一个研究人员团体已经出现，他们在广泛的领域和实验室研究中使用RFID来跟踪单个鸟类、哺乳动物、鱼类、爬行动物甚至昆虫。对于这些项目中的大多数来说，数据收集、分析和管理目前都是手工完成的，这就需要单个研究人员花费大量的时间在数据管理上，而不是科学上。ETAG将通过创建一个基于开源工具的公共基础设施来改变其用户社区的实践，该基础设施将允许科学家近乎实时地收集、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，既可以产生新的科学，也可以与同行和公众分享他们的工作。在喂食站和巢穴跟踪单个动物活动的能力是进行科学、技术、工程和数学（STEM）对话的有力途径。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，提供该领域活动的实时更新。ETAG项目的目的是为基于rfid的研究生成信息学基础设施，并为新兴用户社区提供资源，使他们能够在产生新科学和执行公共宣传和教育方面从他们的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，并将促进有关硬件、实验方法、协议和用户社区生产的数据分析软件的技术信息交换。ETAG是一项更广泛的计划的一部分，该计划将为科学界提供低成本、高度通用的RFID设备。已经有19个国家的50多个研究小组采用了ETAG团队设计的RFID系统，在实地和实验室环境中进行数据收集。硬件和软件资源的改进将促使生物学家和教育工作者更广泛地采用RFID技术。通过对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反应。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，并在实地站点网络中收集相关数据。最后，软件设计文档和代码将全部开源，允许科学家与一系列工程师、网页设计师和IT专家结成联盟，他们将帮助增加和维护ETAG基础设施。该项目的进展和成果可在http://etag.animalmigration.org上跟踪。

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.