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“Every single day
and every word you say,
Every game you play, every night you stay,
I'll be watching you...”
Every game you play, every night you stay,
I'll be watching you...”
Every Breath You Take
Sumner, Matthew, Bogdanovic, Dusan
(1983)
What did you do this
weekend? Did you perhaps go shopping, use an ATM machine, buy a
cinema ticket, hop on a bus or drive past a traffic monitoring
camera? Whatever you did, somewhere a computer programme made a
record of that stuff – the time, the place, the distance, the
amount - and added it to a list of similar activities that other
people did before you.
When Every Breath You Take was written, back in 1983, the song's sinister vision of
surveillance and obsessive control did not encompass today's reality.
The application of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) as a way of
drawing meaningful intelligence out of large data sets, outstrips
anything that could have been imagined by Sting, Orwell or Verne in
their day.
The concept is simple enough: Take a list of data
points, each one having a set of attributes to be studied and some
form of location on a known co-ordinate system. The co-ordinates
might describe any kind of spatial relationship: from bacteria
growing on a Petri dish to aircraft flights on a map of the entire
globe, or anything in between. Once that lot has been loaded up, the
fun stuff can begin – for this is the kind of thing that computers
are very VERY good at...
Consider the movements of Premier League football
players on a soccer pitch. During the course of a single game, the
participants will roam all over the playing area. If we could obtain
a table of ALL these movements (and these days, we can) and plot them
on a diagram, the end result would just be a visually-confusing web
of tracks and changes of direction. But by subjecting the same data
to GIS processing, it becomes possible to highlight which zones the
defence occupied, and which paths were favoured by the attackers
before a goal was scored. Soccer, rugby and tennis coaches are now
using these techniques every day, as their players carry tiny
portable GPS dataloggers during training and competition. Even the
referees are not exempt from this post-match scrutiny, although some
of them are less than happy about such developments!
It's not all Big Brother. GIS analysis is not just used to keep an eye on us: it can benefit us and help to keep us safe. Architects use GIS to draw up the fire-evacuation plans for large buildings. It optimises ambulance routings and can predict areas of overcrowding in public spaces.
And these days, even ospreys are coming in for some analysis...
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| QGis "Brighton" 2.6 User interface |
I have installed a
software package called QGis 2.6. Like all GIS programmes, it is
horribly complicated and difficult to use, but the results are
rewarding. The image at the top of this page shows the activity
summary (known as a “heatmap”) for Kielder osprey Blue 7H during
her stay in Morocco. GIS allows us to select different ways of
looking at the data. It can measure how close one point is to
another, or how many occur within a specified area. In this case, we
told the computer to analyse only those points where the bird was
moving, and to keep a running total of how many there were in any
200-metre radius. The result above should give an indication of 7H's
favourite hunting areas, but puts less emphasis on places where she
was perched or roosting.
We did a similar exercise on UV's data during his stay in Portugal and obtained very accurate results. (This heatmap has not been published because we expect him to use the same locations in future seasons)
We did a similar exercise on UV's data during his stay in Portugal and obtained very accurate results. (This heatmap has not been published because we expect him to use the same locations in future seasons)
As far as we know,
no-one in Europe has used these tools to gain a picture of osprey
hunting behaviour before. As the material builds up, it is hoped
that the exercise will provide more insights and understanding of
this subject, as it is potentially important for conservation work.
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| 7H at Azemmour (Vic Paine) |
Every fish you take,
I'll be watching
you...
-Wlw
[Data source: Forestry Commission England satellite tracking]
QGis Software Project: http://www2.qgis.org/en/site/about/index.html
QGis Software Project: http://www2.qgis.org/en/site/about/index.html
