August 16, 2011
Wildlife Disease Information Node (WDIN) project manager Josh Dein will present "Tools for Electronic Reporting and Analysis of Wildlife Disease Events" this week at the 60th annual international conference of the Wildlife Disease Association in Quebec, Canada.
Dein will detail WDIN's web-based Wildlife Health Event Reporter, which allows individuals and citizen science groups with Internet access to report their sightings of dead and/or sick wild animals. Smartphone users can also use the mobile companion application, Outbreaks Near Me.
The Wildlife Health Event Reporter website was developed by researchers at the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and the U.S. Geological Survey National Wildlife Health Center in Madison. In addition to these active reporting tools, Dein will discuss efforts to collect, process and analyze feeds on the online microblogging service Twitter by passive, incidental observers to extract wildlife disease events information.
Also this week, Megan Hines, technical manager for WDIN, will attend the annual Community for Data Integration Workshop and training event in Denver, Colo., to participate in the Data Blast session. Hines will describe several of the data mining, standardization and exchange projects and services in development at WDIN, inviting discussion and collaboration opportunities from other workshop attendees.
The Nelson Institute hosts WDIN, a cooperative unit of UW-Madison and the U.S. Geological Survey.