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Database, GIS or stick-e note technologies could all be usefully employed in fieldwork activities. However, does the new stick-e note technology provide any useful new concepts or facilities that are not already incorporated in present GIS or database technologies? A definition of the aims of the three technologies would be helpful in answering this:

Database: a mechanism that stores data in a structured form and facilitates the updating and querying of that data.

GIS: A tool for analysing and visualising data associated with geographical location. Typically, statistical analysis will be performed on different layers of data that represent different features (e.g. vegetation, roads, rivers, etc.).

Stick-e Notes: a tool that exploits context-awareness for capturing, recalling, and viewing information about the user’s current environment.

The domain of the database is that of developing optimum storage models and retrieval mechanisms. A database could actually work in harmony with a stick-e note system, providing the underlying model in which the data is stored. Alternatively, the stick-e note could be stored in the form of an HTML page with a location tag specified in the page’s meta-data section. That is to say, the underlying storage model, whatever it may be, is not what defines the essence of a stick-e note; it is merely a foundation with which to support it.

The role of stick-e note technology is to provide a uniform way of working with, or viewing, the subset of data associated with the user’s current environment. In effect, stick-e notes could provide a means to operate on the “here & now” subset of data in a database (or other underlying storage model) of the world (or part of it). The stick-e note system automatically retrieves data relevant to the user’s present context, aids the

Chapter 3: Ecology Fieldwork Tools

user in automatically capturing data about the current context, and provides methods of visualising the data in the current context.

Geographical Information Systems are oriented towards analysing and visualising data that has already been collected. This visualisation and analysis is achieved by relating data to geographical locations. Stick-e note technology works over a much broader range of tasks and context elements. It spans the whole range of activities from data collection to visualisation, and uses a broad range of data about the user’s current environment. On the other hand GIS uses solely location (and perhaps location over time) as a means of plotting and analysing data, stick-e notes can operate with any context element of the user’s environment such as temperature, time, animals present, etc. It is unlikely that stick-e notes will provide better geographic analysis than a GIS, due to this diversity of context elements, but they will be applicable to a much broader range of application areas. A GIS could in fact be used to help visualise stick-e note data through a location-oriented perspective.

When working with primarily location-oriented tasks, GIS and stick-e notes could work in harmony. The GIS could provide the static base system whilst the companion handheld device (equipped with the stick-e note system) could let the user collect and view data in the field, exploiting the system’s knowledge of current context (in this case, most likely location data automatically extracted from a GPS receiver). An important task of a GIS is to analyse correlations between data, e.g. correlating animal densities with vegetation damage over a particular area. It is likely that correlating data would be useful both in the field and back at the base GIS system. The GIS derived correlations would probably be of a more complex nature that underpin strategic decisions, e.g. if vegetation damage is too high due to increased animal densities around a dam in the river then a decision may be made to build another dam to relieve the pressure on this area. The stick-e note correlations out in the field would probably be of a simpler nature and used in immediate decisions, e.g. if all the samples of elephant dung taken thus far can be seen to be concentrated in one particular area then the sampling method may be adjusted.

Stick-e notes provide a general-purpose concept that can be applied in a diverse range of programs that potentially work with an even broader range of context elements. It is

gain access and utilise information about the user’s current environment. Inherently, the applications and tasks likely to benefit most from stick-e note technology are those whose operation could exploit some interaction with the user’s environment. For example, a tourist guide could greatly benefit from exploiting location data, whereas a word-processor probably would not.

Exactly what is meant by the user’s environment varies. For example, in a tourist guide application the main elements of interest in the environment are location and perhaps time of day; the location context can be used to inform the user of sites of interest that are nearby, and the time can be used to ascertain if an attraction is currently open. However, in an ecological data collection task perhaps the weather conditions, vegetation type, and, again, location may be of interest. The current environment, then, is not merely a predefined set of physical attributes such as location, but is a task-

dependent set of context elements. With stick-e note technology, applications can be

created to capture, recall, view or manipulate data about, or related to, the task-related subset of the user’s current environment, e.g. creating a template for a data collection task that contains the appropriate fields to record relevant context elements of the user’s environment.

In essence, the novelty of stick-e note systems lies in the concept of context-aware data capture, retrieval, and visualisation. Databases and GIS systems can be used as engines or assistants to stick-e note systems, but the focus on context-aware capture, retrieval, and visualisation is what defines a stick-e note system.