GPU-Accelerated 3D Visualisation and Analysis of Migratory Behaviour of Long Lived Birds

GPS、GSM技术的进步为运动生态学领域开辟了新的可能性。现在，人们正在收集大量的数据来跟踪动物的活动，目的是回答与动物行为有关的基本问题。随着电子元件的小型化和效率的提高，可以开始将额外的传感器与GPS跟踪相结合，以记录与动物在给定位置的状态相关的特征。新的设备包括加速度计和其他传感器，可以对他们追踪的动物的行为进行分类。像Movebank.org这样的网站很难可视化一些数据集中涉及的数据点的数量，它们目前不支持可视化或分析来自其他传感器（如加速度计或心率记录器）的数据。硬件正在变得可用，但还需要软件来显示现在正在产生的大型多感官数据集，这些数据集将不可避免地在未来变得更加普遍。该软件对研究人员分析和可视化他们的数据至关重要。这对于理解环境条件如何影响鸟类的运动决策以及在变化的环境变量下飞行的能量学尤其重要。该项目将利用5年的跟踪数据，包括100多只在欧洲和非洲迁徙的白鹳。来自伊比利亚的白鹳最近改变了它们的迁徙行为，在这些以前完全迁徙的种群中发现了非迁徙个体。迁徙行为的这些快速变化为确定复杂和高度进化的行为受到不断变化的环境条件影响的机制提供了机会。该项目还将获得海鸟的跟踪数据，这样就可以为海洋领域的动物开发3D可视化，包括GPS、加速度计、浸入、时间深度和其他类型的海上运动和活动数据。该项目的主要目的是开发3D数据可视化技术。目标：1)开发技术，以有效地呈现GPS数据结合额外的传感器在一个地球上。2)该工具应可扩展，以便为多达100只跟踪鸟类提供数据。3)用户应该能够交互式导航全球获得一个概述，也放大查看原始数据。4)了解不同环境条件下鸟类的运动决策与飞行的能量消耗之间的联系。

Advances in GPS, GSM technologies has opened up possibilities in the field of movement ecology. Now vast amounts of data are being collected to track animal movements with the aim of answering fundamental questions related to animal behaviour. As miniaturisation and efficiency of electronic components improves additional sensors can begin to be coupled with the GPS tracking to enable features related to the animal's state at a given position to be recorded. New devices incorporate accelerometer and other sensors to enable classification of the behaviour of the animals they tracked. Websites such as Movebank.org struggle to visualise the quantity of data points involved in some data sets and they do not currently support visualisation or analysis of data from other sensors such as accelerometers or heart-rate loggers. The hardware is becoming available but there is a need for software to display the large multisensory data sets which are being produced now and will inevitably become more prevalent in the future. This software is of paramount importance to enable researchers to analyse and visualise their data. This is especially relevant to understand how environmental conditions may affect the movement decisions of birds and the energetics of flight under changing environmental variables.Methodology This project will take advantage of 5 years of tracking data comprising more than 100 white storks moving in Europe and Africa. White storks from Iberia have recently changed their migratory behaviour and non-migratory individuals have been reported in these previously wholly migratory populations. These rapid changes in migratory behaviour provide an opportunity to both identify the mechanisms through which complex and highly evolved behaviours are affected by changing environmental conditions. The project will also have access to tracking data from seabirds, such that 3D visualisations can be developed for animals in the marine realm incorporating GPS, accelerometer, immersion, time-depth and other types of at-sea movement and activity data. The key aim of this project is to develop techniques to visualise the data in 3D. Objectives: 1) To develop techniques to efficiently render GPS data combined with additional sensor on a globe. 2) The tools should scale to enable data for up to 100 tracked birds. 3) The user should be able to interactively navigate the globe obtaining an overview and also zooming in to view the original data. 4) Understand the links between movement decisions of birds and the energetic costs of flying under different environmental conditions.