Data Science
Data science collaborations not only support our current monitoring projects, but they also support and encourage collaboration. With extensive collaboration in our monitoring projects, we recognized the need to develop an open-source cloud-based, searchable wildlife image repository with managed sharing permissions. The Wild Cat Center’s SPARCd application is the product of our data science collaboration.
SPARCd
SPARCd, Scientific Photo Analyses for Research and Conservation database, is a powerful and secure application that enables the organization, analyses, and sharing of image data. The SPARCd application is a tool that supports collaboration with its secure data sharing capabilities. SPARCd was developed by the UA WCC.
UA Communications & Cyber Technologies
The UA Wild Cat Center collaborated with UA Communication & Cyber Technologies R & D Software Engineer Christophe Schnaufer and Software Engineer Julian Pistorius to further SPARCd development through a Data Science Incubator Award. This award provided advances in the software application SPARCd. SPARCd is a program initially developed for the UA Jaguar and Ocelot Monitoring Project. The incubator award provided performance improvements, updates, and migrating to S3 storage (allowing greater flexibility in data storage and sharing options).
Data Science, AI, and Machine Learning
Data Scientist and UA Designated Campus Colleague, graduate student Luke Denoncourt, is working with UA Wild Cat Center and UA Data Scientists to develop a neural network to incorporate AI (artificial intelligence) into the SPARCd application.