Batch upload of Dávid Horváth's observations
Recently, a dear friend of mine, Dávid Horváth contacted me with the question of whether I could record the observations he had made with his phone over the past few years. It was about 2000 photos and 1000 observation records. Understandably, he didn't want to record them individually, as that would have been a lengthy task for him. I was happy to fulfill the request.
The izeltlabuak.hu website primarily focuses on arthropods found in Hungary. This entry also deals with Hungarian fauna.
Background of the Request
After taking the photos, Dávid didn't save them on the izeltlabuak.hu site because his Samsung phone didn't send the location data contained in the images during the upload process when recording on the platform. He would have had to enter this manually, which would have been a separate task for him. We wrote details about this limitation in our blog post Samsung Gallery Location Data Sending Restriction.
I had previously offered to help him with batch uploading the photos. I only asked him to share the photos with me. Now he indicated that he was ready to share the photos.
Community Value
Batch upload makes it possible for large amounts of valuable natural data to enter the system and thus be shared with the community. This is particularly important because:
- Scientific value: Photos containing location data provide accurate distribution data
- Temporal data: Creation dates help track changes in species occurrence
The Task
I received a total of 2067 photos shared via Google Drive. The photos contained the creation date and location coordinates. There were some where multiple photos were taken of one specimen of a species, these had to be grouped into one observation.
The Process Steps:
- Photo Preparation: I uploaded the photos, which were automatically processed
- Metadata Extraction: I extracted location data and timestamps from the photos
- Grouping: I assigned photos belonging to the same species to one observation
- Creating Observations: I automatically created observations with the appropriate data
- Determinations: I manually submitted determinations for the main categories (beetles, bugs, etc.)
Benefits of Automation
Manual recording would have taken a long time for 1000 observations. The automated process was completed in a few hours, and the quality was also better because fewer human errors occurred.
Results
From 2067 photos, 1082 observations were created. This significantly contributes to the Hungarian arthropod database.
You can find the detailed results in the List of Dávid Horváth's batch uploaded observations post.
Rare species recorded during the import:
Community Service
This type of assistance is not a unique case. If you are in a similar situation and have a large amount of valuable natural data that you would like to share with the community, please contact us. We help with batch uploads!
I am grateful to Dávid for sharing his observations with the community on the izeltlabuak.hu platform!
