1. GEOLocate

3. GEOLocate – Automated Georeferencing Desktop application for automated georeferencing of natural history collections data Locality description analysis, coordinate generation, batch processing, geographic visualization, data correction and error determination Initial release in 2002

4. Basic Georeferencing Process Data Input –Data Correction –Manual or file based data entry Coordinate Generation –Locality description parsing and analysis Coordinate Adjustment –Fine tuning the results on a visual map display Error Determination –Assigning a maximum possible extent for a given locality description

5. Coordinate Generation Pipeline Navigable Waterway Query & Analysis TRS Query & Analysis Placenames Query & Analysis Highway Name and Water body Name Query & Analysis Water Body Query & Snapping Standardize Locality String

6. Overview: Locality Visualization & Adjustment Computed coordinates are displayed on digital maps Manual verification of each record Drag and drop correction of records

7. Overview: Multiple Result Handling Caused by duplicate names, multiple names & multiple displacements Results are ranked and most “accurate” result is recorded and used as primary result All results are recorded and displayed as red arrows Working on using specimen data to limit spread of results

8. Overview: Estimating Error Recorded as a comma delimited array of vertices using latitude and longitude User-defined maximum extent described as a polygon that a given locality description can represent

9. Example

10. Taxonomic Footprint Validation Taxa collected for a given locality Uses point occurrence data from distributed museum databases to validate georeferenced data Species A Species B

11. Lepomis macrochirus Notropis chrosomus Notropis volucellus Micropterus coosae Lepomiscyanellus Lepomis cyanellus Cottus carolinae Hypentelium etowanum Etheostoma ramseyi Footprint for specimens collected at Little Schultz Creek, off Co. Rd. 26 (Schultz Spring Road), approx. 5 mi N of Centreville; Bibb County; White circles indicate results from automated georeferencing. Black circle indicates actual collection locality based on GPS. This sample was conducted using data from UAIC & TUMNH

12. Collaborative Georeferencing Distributed community effort increases efficiency Web based portal used to manage each community DiGIR used for data input (alternatives in development) Similar records from various institutions can be flagged and georeferenced at once Data returned to individual institutions via portal download as a comma delimited file

13. Collaborative Georeferencing

14. Global Georeferencing Typically 1:1,000,000 Will work with users to improve resolution (examples: Australia 250K & Spain 200K) Advanced features such as waterbody matching bridge crossing detection possible but requires extensive data compilation (example: Spain)

15. Multilingual Georeferencing Extensible architecture for adding languages via language libraries Language libraries are text files that define various locality types in a given language Current support for: –Spanish –Basque –Catalan –Galician May also be used to define custom locality types in English

16. Future Directions Collaboration with foreign participants to improve datasets and language libraries Cross platform Java client More web services integration Integration of WFS & WMS for mapping Alternatives to DiGIR

17. Selected Resources Best Practices : http://www.gbif.org/prog/digit/Georeferencing http://www.gbif.org/prog/digit/Georeferencing Georeferencing of museum collections: A review of problems and automated tools, and the methodology developed by the Mountain and Plains Spatio-Temporal Database-Informatics Initiative (Mapstedi) http://systbio.org/?q=node/150 http://systbio.org/?q=node/150 Herpnet Resource List: http://www.herpnet.org/Gazetteer/GeorefResources.htm http://www.herpnet.org/Gazetteer/GeorefResources.htm