D3.3 Mobile App Tool Kit

Project Deliverable Report PROJECT CLIMAREST Coastal Climate Resilience and Marine Restoration Tools for the Arctic Atlantic Basin PARTICIPANT Participant: ARDITI Regional Agency for the Development of Research, Technology and Innovation Participant Number: (4) WP WP3. Develop TASK T3.3 Technical development for marine restoration and climate resilience DELIVERABLE D3.3 Mobile App Tool Kit AUTHORS Marko Radeta, Francisco Silva, Susanne Schäfer, Rodrigo Silva, João Gama Monteiro, João Canning Clode Type: (R) Report Dissemination level: (PU) Public Due Date: 31 May Delivery Date: 31 May This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101093865. Views and opinions expressed are, however, those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the HaDEA. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them. Ref. Ares(2023)3768521 - 31/05/2023 SUMMARY One of the goals of CLIMAREST Work Package 3 (WP3) is to provide technical development for marine restoration and climate resilience (T3.3, M1-M18). The task includes the creation of a Mobile application tool and facilitating restoration efforts (e.g. providing data input for monitoring programmes). Project CLIMAREST leverages the mobile application Dive Reporter developed by Marine Technology and AI R&D group Wave Labs at MARE/ARDITI team1to enable citizen and stakeholder participation in monitoring bio-indicators activities and to assess the impact of restoration activities in target sites. Dive Reporter allows users to report on sightings and abundances of a predetermined list of indicator species (i.e. selected based on conservation status or ecological relevance) that can be used to systematically monitor fluctuations in the frequency and abundance of selected taxa to assess the condition status of habitats being restored and the effects of the restoration actions. Additionally, the app allows reporting marine litter occurrences, and embedded data collection (e.g. users, number of surveys, geolocation) allow users to assess information related to use and activities (e.g. number of divers and dives in a given place), providing key information for marine litter pollution as well as for an evaluation and mapping of diver related ecosystem services. The mobile application will cover multiple habitat restoration scenarios by integrating location, habitat, and restoration into the criteria. The mobile application allows surveys as voluntary input and is anonymous, while all obtained reports are automatically compiled and curated for analysis in the back oce of Wave Labs using custom Application Programming Interface (API) routes. This report provides detailed information on the design and implementation of Mobile and Backoce Application Interfaces (Figures 1 and 2, respectively). Dive Reporter. is tailored to diving centres as key users that will integrate a data collection program to monitor key indicators for good environmental status, how it reacts to local restoration activities and how it copes with pressure from human activities and global warming. The same mobile application and back oce kit are structured to integrate additional apps (e.g. Whale Reporter2, Litter Reporter3) and to further develop additional apps that can be used in other restoration areas and basins or other custom applications. 3https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tigerwhale.litterreporter 2https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tigerwhale.whalereporter 1https://wave-labs.org 2 Mobile Application Interface Dive Reporter mobile application has been developed and designed following the latest Android and iOS guidelines and is available both at the Google Play Store4and Apple App Store5. The app is optimized to work both on mobile and tablet interfaces. The main goal of the app is to engage diving centres through dive guides using the app to interact with recreational SCUBA divers during debriefing to report sightings of specific marine taxa, including their abundance. The application provides a main screen (Figure 1A), allowing the dive masters to preselect the number of divers, dive time and the selected dive spot. After each dive, the dive guide asks the diving participants to report sightings and abundance of the selected species by first selecting the species of desire (e.g. algae in Figure 1B) and then selecting the number indicating the abundance (Figure 1C). The same process can be made for other species and is repeated by asking the whole group to agree on the consensus. Once all species are checked, the report is created (Figure 1D) and further sent to the Wave Labs API. A B C D Figure 1. Current User Interface of the Dive Reporter mobile application, seen on Google Play Store during May 2023 (from left to right): (A) metadata input on the mobile phone; (B) list of studied species per restoration place, in this context Madeira island; (C) abundance levels and description of species of interest; and (D) confirmation of performed survey. 5https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tigerwhale.divereporter 4https://apps.apple.com/ae/app/dive-reporter/id1636665151 3 E F G Figure 1 (cont). Current User Interface of the Dive Reporter mobile application, seen on Apple App Store during May 2023 (from left to right): (E) metadata input on the tablet; (F) species list on tablet interface; and (G) abundance levels of individual species, seen on a tablet interface. Backoce Application Interface Contrary to the mobile interface, which serves to facilitate data input from the diving spot, the back oce interface allows users (dive centres, dive guides, marine researchers) to manage data (by creating, reading, updating, and deleting the content). Backoce is interfaced with the Wave Labs/MARE/ARDITI server and can be accessed through custom-based Application Programming Interface (API) routes. The back oce interface is depicted in Figure 2. It consists of the map indicating the highest abundances of monitored species, annotated with heat map density distribution. Such may be seen both by user administrators (Figure 2A) or from dive centres (see only individual reports from dive spots in Figure 2C). Using the top bar search placeholder, the users can filter and sort the query results. The other part of the interface encompasses the tabular view of the same information allowing more details (e.g. amount of metadata such as duration and amount of divers). The interface also allows the export of the obtained data in CSV and XLS files, facilitating data analysis for marine researchers. As a registered user, each dive centre is able to add a new diving spot through the interface itself, which will require validation by the administrator (Figure 2B) to avoid site replication and assure metadata consistency. Each registered dive centre can only access and visualize its own reports. 4 A Figure 2. Current User Interface of the Dive Reporter back oce, seen on the Wave Labs during May 2023. (A) Administrator view of all reported species and abundances on the page. 5 B C Figure 2 (cont). Current User Interface of the Dive Reporter back oce, seen on the Wave Labs during May 2023. From top to bottom: (B) Administrator view of the suggested diving spots by the diving centres; and (C) The view of the latest reports by the individual diving centres. 6 Towards Custom Monitoring Programmes The aforementioned toolkit provides an opportunity to perform a long-term monitoring program in the areas of interest, in this particular case, monitor target species on selected dive spots with and without restoration activities. Nevertheless, the success of any monitoring plan with Dive Reporter depends on the willingness and motivation of dive centres and dive guides to participate on a regular basis. Within Climarest, the next step requires further stakeholder engagement to ensure participation and it will include the usage of Dive Reporter in multiple dive spots (by several dive centers and service providers) in order to crowd source data on sightings of key marine species at multiple locations. Madeira Cimarest Dive Reporter monitoring programme is intended to use tablet-based applications in each participating dive centre, to continuously assess frequency and abundance variations in target taxa on 10-13 diving spots. These dive sites will include sites where restoration activities will be conducted and sites where no restoration activities will occur, enabling an assessment of the effects of restoration activities. In addition, data collected using the Dive Reporter monitoring program will be compared with data collected with underwater visual census and scientific surveys to examine for correlations between them and assess how comparable is the data collected with this citizen science based monitoring program using Dive Reporter. This pilot program can easily be upscaled as it can be adapted for different geographic locations. Similarly to Madeira, other locations can leverage Dive Reporter to launch their own monitoring programme targeting different species on different geographic locations. Additionally, the same data framework and backend can be used for future and new mobile apps from the Reporter software suite that can be custom designed for target stakeholders (e.g. beach goers, fisherman, researchers) to facilitate data and collection and reporting on different scenarios (e.g. seagrass meadows, oyster reefs). 7