Project overview
Any time you upload data to Wildlife Insights, you’ll upload data to a project. A project is a group of (or a single) camera deployments with a defined objective and methods. The project space in Wildlife Insights is where you can manage, edit and review metadata related to locations, deployments and data sharing.
Navigating the Project workspace
Summary tab: The project summary tab displays a map of all locations, an overview of data within that project.
Details tab: This is where you can set and edit project details including the project name, objectives, data licenses, embargo time, sensor layout, and set options to delete human images. This is also where you can add and edit Deployment and Location information (required fields).
Identify tab: All data uploaded to Wildlife Insights through the web-based upload will show up in the Identify tab. These images have passed through the AI model and are ready for a user review. You’ll see all of the project’s unidentified images here and can filter by deployment, species and blanks.
Catalogued tab: All of the data that has been reviewed by a user will be stored in this section. Only data from the project you’re viewing will be shown here.
Download button: You can easily download all of the data from the entire project by clicking on this button and selecting “Request data”. To download data from the entire organization, go to the Organization page to request data.
User Permissions button: This button will open a screen where you can invite users to join your project.
Create and Edit a Project
To create a new project, you can:
1. Use the Projects List (see the image on the left for an example):
- Click the green Projects List tab on the left side of the screen
- Select the “Add new” button at the bottom of the tab
- Select “New project”
- Continue to step 3
2. From the Manage page (see the image on the right for an example)
- Navigate to the homepage from anywhere in the platform by clicking on the Manage link at the top of the page.
- Once on the homepage, click the green Create button underneath the large green 1.
- Select New project.
- Continue to step 3
3. Fill out the form, making sure to fill out all required fields marked with an asterisk. You can return at any time to edit any of these fields described below:
- Organization: The organization that owns the project. You can reassign a project to a different organization if you have an owner role in both the current and the new organization.
- Initiative: Share your project with other organizations through an initiative. You must have an Initiative Owner or Editor role to assign a project to that initiative.
- Website: If your project has a dedicated website, you can enter it here. Please enter websites with http(s)// at the beginning. This website will be displayed on the public project page
- Project name: The full name of your project.
- Project short name: A short name for your project. This name will be used for display purposes in Wildlife Insights.
- Project Type: There are two types of projects that you can create in Wildlife Insights: Image or Sequence. Read more about Project Types below.
- Abbreviation: Additional field if your project has an abbreviated name.
- Country: The country where the project is located.
- Start date: The start date of your project.
- End date: The end date of your project. You may leave this empty if your project is ongoing.
- Metadata license: Assign a license to the metadata (i.e., identifications, locations, project details) in your project. You may select from standard Creative Commons licenses: CC0, CC BY.
- Photos license: Assign a license to the images in your project. You may select from standard
- Creative Commons licenses: CC0, CC BY, or CC BY-NC. Read more below
- Objectives: State the objectives of the project.
- Methodology: State the methodology of the project.
- Credit line: If you would like to specify the individuals who are credited in the citation generated by Wildlife Insights, enter their names in this field. Please enter their names in this format: Last name, First and Middle name initials.
- Embargo: Projects can be embargoed for up to 48 months.
- Project species: Select if your project focuses on a particular species.
- Project individual animals: If your project focused on marking individuals in a population, please choose Yes.
- Project sensor layout: Select the sampling layout that most closely represents your cameras.
- Project sensor cluster: If cameras were set up in clusters or pairs, please note here.
- Project sensor method: Select if cameras were set up to trigger by sensor detection, time lapse or both.
- Project blank images removed: Record here if your dataset includes blank images. Note : Apart from legacy datasets, Wildlife Insights only accepts complete datasets. Please submit data including all blanks.
- Project bait use/type: Record if your project used baited cameras. Any selection made here will be used to automatically fill in the Deployment Bait Type field. If project bait use=No, all deployments within that project must have a bait type= None
- Project stratification/type: Note if your projects were stratified across different zones. For example, a strata may be a protected area vs. a non-protected area.
- Acknowledgements: You may add additional acknowledgements here (e.g., partners, funders, volunteers). This information will be displayed on the public project page.
- Remarks : Any additional remarks may be noted here. Note: this field is not included in any data download.
- Automatically delete the photos identified with humans: Select this option to delete images of humans from images in your project. Read more about this option below.
Project Types
Data about the animals detected by the camera traps can be recorded in one of two ways: by image or by sequence. You can set how you’d like to record data when the project is created. Note that once a project type is selected, it cannot be changed.
Image project:
- Image projects record data for each individual image. This means that each image is associated with an identification, which Wildlife Insights assumes to be correct after the image is reviewed/edited.
- For example, let’s say a series of 10 images is captured within 60 seconds. There are two armadillos walking past the camera. Five images show one armadillo, three images show two armadillos, and two images are blank. In an image project, you would tag the images according to what was in a single image. That’s to say, five images would be tagged with one armadillo, three images would be tagged with two armadillos, and two images would be tagged as blank.
Sequence project:
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Sequence projects record data for a sequence of contiguous images taken within 60 seconds of each other. This means that one identification (which could be multiple animals) is assigned to the entire sequence of images. Group size is also a key variable for a sequence (how many animals are captured throughout the series of images in the sequence). If there are two or more species in a sequence, each can be recorded separately within the same sequence and with its group size. The AI model is trained to return the most common result for the sequence.
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For example, let’s say a series of 10 images is captured in 5 minutes with less than 60 seconds between each image. There are two armadillos walking past the camera. Five images show one armadillo, three images show two armadillos, and two images are blank. In a sequence project, this entire group of images would be tagged as 'armadillo' with a group size of two.
Create a location or deployment
There are two ways you can create a location or deployment:
1. During the upload process you can either create a new location and deployment or select from a list of existing locations and deployments in your project. If you would like to create a new location and/or deployment:
- Select the green New deployment button.
- If you would like to create a new location, you must create a new deployment and then select the green New location button.
2. You can create new locations and deployments at any time in the project details tab:
- Navigate to Project Details tab
- Scroll to the bottom of the page
- You’ll find a table of Locations and Camera Deployments.
- Click on the green New location button or the green New deployment button.
- Note: You can also edit any existing location or deployment here by clicking on the green Edit button on the right hand side of the location or deployment. Learn more about managing locations and deployments.
Embargo
Wildlife Insights encourages users to share their data publicly but also recognizes the need to publish data before sharing. Embargoes offer the opportunity to keep project data private for a period of time before it is made public.
Embargoed data will not be available to the public for the duration of the embargo, but project metadata (e.g., project name, objectives) may be shared with the public. The embargo begins on the date the first image is uploaded to a deployment and is measured separately for each deployment. Read more about embargoed data in our FAQs.
To set an embargo:
- Go to your project details page and scroll to the Embargo field;
- Enter the number of months that you want to embargo your data. The maximum embargo time is 48 months;
- Once an embargo is entered, you'll be prompted with an option to authorize Wildlife Insights and WI Core Partners to use your embargoed data for aggregated products for peer-reviewed publications.
- Scroll down the page and click the green Save Changes button.
Creative Commons Licenses
For each project, you can select how you want to license your data under these Creative Commons licenses:
- Images (recorded data) may be licensed under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-NC.
- Metadata may be licensed under either CC 0 or CC BY.
These licenses are described below:
- Creative Commons Zero (CC0) permits a user to share, adapt and modify the work, even for commercial purposes, without asking permission
- Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0), which permits a data user to share and adapt material with appropriate attribution, including for commercial purposes
- Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 (CC BY-NC 4.0), which permits a data user to share and adapt material with appropriate attribution, only for noncommercial purposes
Delete images of humans
Wildlife Insights provides the option to hide or delete images of humans for organizations with data privacy restrictions. If you’d like to delete images of humans from your private workspaces, select this option in the Project Details page. Images of humans will be deleted only after a user has verified the identification as a human (i.e., the image has moved to the Catalogued section). All other metadata (i.e., timestamp, identification) will still be available after the human image has been deleted.
If the option to delete images of humans is not selected, only Project Owners will be able to see images of humans after the ID has been verified. Images of humans will be hidden from all other users in the project (Project Editors, Collaborators, Taggers and Viewers).
Join an existing project
If you would like to join an existing project, you must be invited by a Project Owner or Editor.
Invite someone to join your Project
Once you’re viewing the project summary page, you can add users by selecting the green people icon button, located on the right side of the screen. This will open a “Users permissions” box where you can invite users by entering their email There are five roles that you can assign at the project level: Owner, Editor, Contributor, Tagger or Viewer. There is no limit on how many users you can add to your project.
Remove a team member from a project
You can remove any user from a project and revoke their access to that entity by opening the User Permissions box and selecting “Revoke”.When someone is removed from a project, all of the data uploaded by that user will remain in the project.