Demo
Hands on !

SYNTHESYS NA-D
The EU synthesis of systematic resources

EDIT WP5
The European Distributed Institute of Taxonomy

RMCA
The Royal Museum for Central Africa

The Itinerary Tool : overview

the general idea

The Itinerary Tool aims to retrace the most probable pathway taken by scientific explorations (expeditions), based on the the georeferenced data points they provide : specimens collected at specific locations. The Tool will detect possible itinerary pathways and visualise them for a human eye to check. Insight in the pathway can then be used to assess the data (data cleaning and correction).

input

The Tool takes a point dataset, with coordinates and time references for each point (though for the moment, only the coordinates are taken into account). The point dataset can be submitted in a range of data formats, for ease of use. Currently accepted formats are :

1. KML (Google Earth)
2. GPX (GPS offload format)
3. CSV (simple comma separated files)
4. GML (Geographical Markup Language)

In addition, data from online providers such as GBIF will be used as input as well. The Generic Query Tool will provide connections to any BioCase, DiGIR and TAPIR provider.

processing

Currently, two geospatial algorithms are implemented, providing a basic toolset for data interpretation :

1. the Dijkstra shortest path algorithm
2. the Ramen-Douglas-Peucker algorithm for polyline simplification

Further testing and improving will yield a complete "itinerary detecting" algorithm from these (and perhaps additional ) components.

output

The main output of the Tool are extrapolated coordinates and pathway lines. These are served through a Web Map Server application, for easy visualisation in any standards-compliant viewer. The data can also be downloaded in a host of formats, such as currently :

1. KML (as waypoints) for Google Earth
2. KML (as pathways) for Google Earth
3. CSV (simple comma separated files) for processing in a spreadsheet

Demo

You'll find a demo version of the ItinTool here .

collaboration

The ItinTool is developed within the SYNTHESYS NA-D framework, and will be integrated in the EDIT GeoPlatform currently under development. Through standard services (Web Map Service) the result data will be served to the mapviewer portal , where MNCN is currently working on user-friendly visualisation (in particular, the possibility to adapt the symbology of their layers).