This is a talk I gave at the Australasian Bat Society Conference in April, 2012, in Melbourne. The focus is on the Biological Data Recording System, and how it is in use in two projects, the Australasian Bat Echolocation Database and our own research in Perth into bats.

1. GAIA RESOURCES
Technology and Bats
Two Case Studies of On-line and Mobile Systems
Piers Higgs*, Grit Schuster
Gaia Resources
Kyle Armstrong
CSIRO
Presented at Australian Bat Society Conference, Melboune, 11-13th April, 2012

2. OVERVIEW
Topics covered
• Biological Data Recording System
• Australian Bat Echolocation Database
• Gaia Resources Urban Bat Survey
• What next?

3. BIOLOGICAL DATA RECORDING SYSTEM
What is it?
• Open source, freely available, web based
application
• Designed to help organisations manage their
biological and environmental data
• Developed under funding from the Atlas of Living
Australia, and now from funding from a range of
other sources

4. BIOLOGICAL DATA RECORDING SYSTEM
What can it do?
• Customise to your existing brand and site,
• Create a range of data entry forms,
• Faceted searches and map products,
• A bulk upload and export functionality,
• Use different taxonomies in the system,
• Species pages, including identification tools
• Mobile tools

5. BIOLOGICAL DATA RECORDING SYSTEM
What can it do?

6. ABED
Australasian Bat Echolocation Database
• Developed to house reference, representative and
anonymous call recordings from bats in Australasia

7. ABED
Goals
3. Contribute to increased robustness of identifications
made on acoustic surveys;
5. Add to the knowledge of the distribution and
diversity of Australasian bat species; and
7. Become a primary resource archive for the
disparate and ephemeral sound recordings that are
made as part of multitudes of field surveys, with links
to other such projects worldwide.

8. ABED
Progress
• Currently finalising the species page information
and reference call sets (80 species pages to work
through)
• Working on the permanent web hosting with CSIRO
and the ALA
• Preparing for the release of the site for general use

9. URBAN BAT RESEARCH
Gaia Resources’ own Research
• Deployed to store results of an Anabat based survey
undertaken in the Perth Metropolitan region by
Gaia Resources staff

10. URBAN BAT RESEARCH
Goals
3. To test an instance of our own software in a real
world situation,
5. To undertake an inventory survey of the bats within
the Perth Metropolitan area,
7. To publish the results and make the data freely
available,
9. To further expand the BDRS software as a result of
the research.

11. URBAN BAT RESEARCH
Progress
• Developed a protocol for staff to take the unit
home, including instructions
• Deployed to a mobile
device to accompany
the Anabat
• Since January 2012,
have had 427 records
• Not yet id’d to species

12. WHAT NEXT?
ABED?
• Finalisation of the species pages
• Opening of the site for general use
Urban Bat Research?
• Arduino-based systems for gathering sound files
• Adding automated identification to the server
• Publishing results!

13. WHAT NEXT?
BDRS?
• Available now to take and use – but requires some
setup knowledge of web server style software
http://tinyurl.com/6qd5z3j
• Funding from the ALA is complete at the end of
April, but further funding coming in from other
groups, including commercial organisations
• Please contact us if you want to know more

14. CITIZEN SCIENCE & THE ENVIRONMENT
Questions?
• If you want to know more, please contact us
Kyle Armstrong
kyle.n.armstrong@gmail.com
0404 423 264
Piers Higgs
piers@gaiaresources.com.au
0411 754 006