BioCollect – a tool for systematic monitoring
BioCollect is a web-based, feature-rich but simple-to-use tool to collect field observations for monitoring biodiversity. BioCollect is being developed by the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA) in collaboration with other organizations, including SBDI. BioCollect assists users in collecting field data for their own projects as well as to enable new biodiversity data to be easily copied into public databases where it can be available for others to use in research, policy and management. SBDI developers are currently working together with the ALA team, specifically to improve and adapt the open-source data collection tool, BioCollect, for Swedish and international use.
BioCollect allows researchers to set up projects with specified systematic inventory schemes and coordinate the work with staff or volunteers collecting data. This could e.g. include standardized instructions to data collectors, data entry, data flow, quality checks and finally data publishing. BioCollect can be adapted to fit the needs of any systematic monitoring scheme or research study regardless of the organism(s) of interest. Researchers at Lund University started in 2021 to use BioCollect as a tool for managing their systematic monitoring projects. The SBDI contribution to the BioCollect tool also involves a translation feature which will benefit the ALA community and especially contribute to non-English speaking parts of the world using the Living Atlases platform to record biodiversity data.
Access the tool at (requires account): https://biocollect.biodiversitydata.se/
Source code is available at: https://github.com/biodiversitydata-se/biocollect
Contact: biocollect@biodiversitydata.se