Missouri Botanical Garden Open Conference Systems, TDWG 2014 ANNUAL CONFERENCE

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Database tools for decision support in Kajiado County, Kenya
Victor Mose, David Western

Building: Elmia Congress Centre, Jönköping
Room: Rum 10
Date: 2014-10-29 12:00 PM – 12:15 PM
Last modified: 2014-10-09

Abstract


We use forty years of animal and plant data collected in the Amboseli Ecosystem in Kajiado County, Kenya to demonstrate the application of open source tools in analyzing, processing and presenting visual results. These highly interactive tools developed in R contain a series of commands that perform various data tasks including: examining the data structure, sub setting, aggregation, exploratory data analysis, species population estimation, mapping, among others. The tools utilize several packages that are freely available at (cran.r-project.org/web/packages/)

The Amboseli Conservation Program (www.amboseliconservation.org) and African Conservation Centre customized the tools to suit the local community data needs and level of expertise without losing the underlying data complexities. The implementation requires basic computer knowledge and can be executed by local community trainees using straight forward keyboard and computer mouse commands. This happens at community centers such as the Lale’enok Resource Centre which are tasked with collecting biodiversity data within the County.

Results show that with these automated tools, long-term data in huge databases can be analyzed rapidly and presented in a way that encourages community participation, ownership and uptake in county decision making. The tools also allow different biodiversity scenario building and model formulation.