About Camptocamp
Camptocamp are a Swiss IT service provider with a focus on open source software development and integration. They have been working with the city of Zurich to map bird nesting sites. We spoke with Wolfgang, the project manager, and Julian who is a GIS technical consultant about how they have used Mergin Maps to design the project and work with volunteers to map the nesting sites.
Mapping bird nesting sites on buildings
Switzerland has laws that protect the nesting sites of various species of birds, including swifts, swallows and house martins. Therefore the city of Zurich enforces protection measures for planning applications that impact nesting sites. To this end, the city has maintained a register since the 1980s that lists as many nesting sites in the city as possible that is regularly updated. These surveys are typically conducted by a mix of experts and volunteers. Historically the surveyors would go out and record the locations of bird nests in the city on paper maps that had to be digitised later. In order to take advantage of the latest technology to have the most comprehensive survey data possible, the city has sought to enable surveyors to collect the data directly on their mobile devices. The conservation department of GrünStadt Zürich, with the support of the Head of Geo-IT from the IT department, explored use cases and designed the key requirements of the project. The city then requested offers from various professional service providers for potential solutions that would meet the project requirements such as:
- They wanted a mobile app for the volunteers to use to conduct the surveys
- The app had to be simple enough for non-technical users who are not GIS experts
- The solution needed to facilitate the collection of data that fit into a complex relational data model with centralised data storage
- The project needed to be ready to be deployed for the field survey in a very short timeline
Setting up the Mergin Maps project with QGIS is a major benefit
One of the biggest challenges for this project was finalising the data model with the city and getting familiar with the Mergin Maps ecosystem. Fortunately, Julian found that Mergin Maps has thorough documentation, which made it easy to get familiar with the app. Because he was already familiar with QGIS, he could set the project up in a familiar environment and it would work on Mergin Maps the way he would expect it to.
They also found that the mobile app interface for Mergin Maps simplified the data collection process in a way that it was accessible for most of the users. They were able to train their counterparts in the city’s environmental department who then were able to train the surveyors how to use the app. This was an important feature because the surveyors were volunteers, most of whom were bird enthusiasts and had limited technical ability. Most of the surveyors were able to pick up on how to use the app and the seamless integration with QGIS made it easy to include digitised data from surveyors who still preferred the pencil and paper method.
With the power of QGIS and Mergin Maps, Julian was able to design a complex data structure that was easy for the user in the field. They needed to collect points to represent bird nesting sites on buildings along with a photo, details of the bird species and other data. They were able to use spatial joins to automatically record the building address when a new point was created with other information such as the time of recording and the username of the surveyor. They also used Mergin Maps’s support of HTML widgets to create a tab that had information on what data the surveyor needed to enter for each field along with built-in survey logic constraints to ensure accurate data collection. They also took advantage of the ability to set the project up for offline use so users could collect data without a mobile connection.
Future of the project
The field collection in Mergin Maps was successfully completed from May until the end of September. They had around 70 volunteer surveyors who worked on the project and now that the data is collected they will start to extract and analyse the data. Given the project’s success, they will probably use Mergin Maps for the survey again next year and hope to use Mergin Maps in the future with other projects as well.
