Capturing Data in the Field: An Application Framework for Easily Creating Custom Data and Metadata Entry Forms on Handheld and Desktop Computers

生态学家研究了许多关键和多样化的环境问题，从全球气候变化到生物多样性的丧失。支持这一研究范围所需的数据非常复杂和多变，收集数据往往是劳动密集型的。这些特点对生态数据的收集和管理提出了明显的挑战，而现有的一系列软件工具无法满足这些挑战。生态数据的保存和再利用前景因其描述不佳和存档不足的倾向而进一步受到影响。因此，过去收集的可能相关的数据往往很难找到或难以解释，因为它们是如何收集的不明确的。瓶颈是缺乏数据文件编制的标准方法或格式或协助这些职能的易于使用的框架，这些数据管理和获取问题将通过减少实地采集环境数据过程中的低效和错误而得到解决。这将通过为手持外地设备和台式计算机设计和建立一套灵活、易于使用的软件工具来实现，这些工具将简化外地数据收集、数据输入和数据文件编制。这些软件工具将帮助创建结构良好、明确和视觉上令人满意的数据输入表格，从而消除了为每个新项目定制数据库开发的需要，也不需要经常随意和容易出错的将数据输入“自由格式”电子表格。最后，研究人员和学生将接受使用这些新工具的培训。对合成生态学研究的需求越来越大，这些研究将在更大的空间范围和更长的时间段内提供对生命系统的更有力的理解。这种综合需要整合从多个来源收集的环境数据。为了实现这一目标，必须更加关注如何收集和保存原始数据。这项研究应该通过这样做对科学界产生重大影响--促进生态和环境数据的采集、记录和获取。该软件不仅旨在简化收集数据的过程，而且还通过强制执行逻辑上一致的数据结构来促进健全的数据实践。

Ecologists investigate a number of critical and diverse environmental issues, ranging from global climate change to the loss of biodiversity. The data needed to support this range of research are highly complex and variable, and the data are often labor-intensive to collect. These characteristics present distinct challenges for the collection and management of ecological data that are not being met by the range of available software tools. Prospects for the preservation and re-use of ecological data are further compromised by their tendency to be poorly described and inadequately archived. As a result, potentially relevant data that have been collected in the past are often difficult to find or difficult to interpret because of ambiguities in how they were collected. The bottleneck is a lack of standard methods or formats for data documentation or easy-to-use frameworks that assist in these functions.These data management and access problems will be solved by reducing inefficiencies and errors during the process of capturing environmental data in the field. This will be achieved through the design and building of a set of flexible, easy-to-use software tools for handheld field devices, as well as desktop computers-that will streamline field data collection, data entry and data documentation. These software tools will assist in the creation of data entry forms that are well-structured, unambiguous, and visually pleasing-thus eliminating the need for customized database development for each new project, or the often haphazard and error-prone entry of data into "free-form" spreadsheets. Finally, researchers and students will be trained in the use of these new tools.There is a growing need for synthetic ecological studies that will provide for a more powerful understanding of living systems, over larger spatial scales and longer time periods. Such syntheses require integrating environmental data collected from a number of sources. To achieve this goal, it is imperative to pay more attention to how the raw data are collected and preserved. The research should have major impacts on the scientific community by doing this-facilitating the capture, documentation and accessibility of ecological and environmental data. This software is not only intended to simplify the process of collecting data, but also to promote sound data practice by enforcing logically consistent data structures.