OzTrack – e-Infrastructure to support the Management, Analysis and Sharing of Animal Tracking Data Jane Hunter, Charles Brooking, Wilfred Brimblecombe The eResearch Lab, School of ITEE The University of Queensland Brisbane, Australia {j.hunter; c.brooking; wilfred}@uq.edu.au Ross G. Dwyer 1 , Hamish A. Campbell 1 , Matthew E. Watts 2 , Craig E. Franklin 1 1 The ECO-Lab, 2 EDG, School of Biological Sciences The University of Queensland Brisbane, Australia {ross.dwyer; hamish.campbell; m.watts; c.franklin}@uq.edu.au Abstract—The aim of the OzTrack project is to provide common e-Science infrastructure to support the management, pre-processing, analysis and visualization of animal tracking data generated by researchers who are using telemetry devices to study animal behavior and ecology in Australia. This paper describes the technical challenges and design decisions associated with the development of the OzTrack system. It also describes the pre-processing, analysis and visualization services that we have developed to help researchers understand how their study species move across space and time. Finally this paper outlines the systems’ current limitations and preliminary results and feedback from its evaluation to date. Keywords— GPS tracking, spatial database, biotelemetry, animal movement, wildlife ecology, data analysis I. INTRODUCTION Over the past 10 years, there has been a dramatic increase in the use of GPS telemetry and Argos location systems to monitor the movement and behavior of free-ranging animals. This has been combined with improvements in the resolution and accuracy of telemetric data and reductions in the cost, size and mass of the devices used to generate this data. Such technological advances have broadened the range of species that can be studied and enabled researchers to develop precise maps of animal movements that can be used to understand animal space use and species interactions and to answer complex behavioral and ecological questions . However the adoption of such technologies brings with it, significant challenges associated with managing and analysing wildlife tracking data derived from animal-attached telemetric location devices. In particular, the volumes of data being generated by telemetry devices introduce new challenges associated with data complexity, error handling, efficient data management and advanced analysis and modeling tools [1]. A large number of research projects, currently being undertaken within Australia, involve the tagging and monitoring of animal movement, in order to better understand the impacts of climate change and environmental factors on specific species – and to improve decision making and policy formulation associated with the management of ecosystems and associated wildlife. Aquatic species (crocodiles, sharks, whales, turtles and rays), avian taxa (birds), terrestrial wildlife (lizards, cane toads, bats, koalas, camels, feral cats, wild dogs/dingos) and production livestock (cattle, sheep) are all being monitored to capture quantitative data that can be used to improve our understanding of their movement and behavior [2- 4]. To date, the vast majority of data from animal tracking studies undertaken throughout Australia has been stored as flat files, in small personal data bases or on CDs/DVDs/USB sticks, where it is inaccessible to the broader scientific community. Curation and storage of the data generated from these studies within a central repository will greatly increase data transparency, reduce duplication and enable sharing and comparison of data between study groups. In addition, the pre- processing and analysis of these datasets is a daunting task for many users and involves downloading and learning a variety of software packages. These problems have led to the need for a standardized approach to animal tagging data management. Hence, the primary goal of OzTrack [5] - a NeCTAR- funded collaboration between the UQ eResearch Lab and the UQ EcoLab - is the development of common e-science infrastructure to support the capture, storage and analysis of animal tracking data being generated through telemetry devices. The remainder of this paper describes and evaluates OzTrack in detail and is structured as follows: Section II describes the Objectives; Section III describes related work; Section IV describes a case study that uses OzTrack; Section V describes the System Architecture; Section VI provides a discussion and evaluation; Section VII outlines future work and Section VIII provides a conclusion. II. OBJECTIVES The high level aim of OzTrack is to develop a Web interface to a data repository and set of services to underpin the next generation of research into animal movement. The more specific objectives of the OzTrack project are to: 2013 IEEE 9th International Conference on e-Science 978-0-7695-5083-1/13 $25.00 © 2013 IEEE DOI 10.1109/eScience.2013.38 140