WebBeeWebBeeA platform for a Brazilian information

network on bees.

Inter-American Workshop on Environmental

Data Access3-6 March 2004 – Campinas - Brazil

Universidade de São Paulo

• Antonio Mauro Saraiva– Escola Politécnica/ Agricultural Automation Lab

• Vera Lucia Imperatriz Fonseca– Instituto de Biociências / BeeLab

outline

WebBee:From instrumentation to an

information network

Start: instrumentation

• in 1999, research on flight activity of stingless bees

• focus on automatic data acquisition– to get more and better data– to free the researchers from some time

consuming and error-prone activities .

Bee hives monitored for

• Air temperature

• Air humidity

• Bee flux: “Bee detector”– I.R. emitter-detector pair

a web-based monitoring system

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

50

17

:37

:00

18

:36

:00

19

:35

:00

20

:34

:00

21

:33

:00

22

:32

:00

23

:31

:00

00

:30

:00

01

:29

:00

02

:28

:00

03

:27

:00

04

:26

:00

05

:25

:00

06

:24

:00

07

:23

:00

08

:22

:00

09

:21

:00

10

:20

:00

11

:19

:00

12

:18

:00

13

:17

:00

14

:16

:00

15

:15

:00

16

:14

:00

Bee count: flight activity concentrated in the morning

A step ahead: an information system

• Knowledge and information on bees need to be– organized, preserved, shared, published(!)

• Target audience– scientists, beekeepers, students, teachers, policy

makers, agricultural producers…• Increase public awareness on the importance and uses of

pollinators

– in Portuguese and other languages

WebBee: information system

• Contents:• Bee species data: biology, taxonomy, distribution,

• Hives, equipment & numerical data

• Beekeeping, plants visited

• Bibliography

• Information source: Intellectual Property

– Dynamic web pages: database– Multimedia: texts, images, videos

• Web–based: easy access and sharing

Database – Species catalog

WebBee

•images and texts

Database – Weather station (at IB – USP, São Paulo)

WebBee

graphics and table

Database of Bibliography

WebBee

Documents: description and files (PDF; DOC, etc)

Replicate WebBee

• Do other groups have similar needs and problems?

WeB Bee

• Does a single group have enough data to populate the system?

• How much time would it take?

• Do they have other data?

WebBee - a network

• Groups cooperate on providing data – Species information– Experimental data / weather stations– By region, species, family…

• Distributed Effort– less work for each– Each is part of solution

WeB Bee

WebBee - a networkImportant issues: • Intellectual property

– Contents: texts, photos, etc author– neutral domain: www.webbee.org.br

• WebBee: consortium– partners– credit– management

WeB Bee

Status

• Centralized database

• Remote data-entry

• Other features: – plants visited (names, few images)– pollen characteristics– 5 groups (4 bee groups)

Participants:

BeeLab – Instituto de Biociências da USP

Agricultural Automation Lab – Escola Politécnica - USP

Embrapa Amazônia Oriental

BeeLab - Empresa Baiana de Desenvolvimento Agrícola – EBDA

Universidade Est. de Feira de Santana - UEFS

WeB Bee

Brazilian Pollinators Initiative (BPI) website

• events

• publications

• timeline

• activities

What is next ?

• Improve content: – populate database – other groups – other languages

• Data validation / referee• Interoperability/interconnection

with other information systems– DiGIR– Partnership with CRIA

WeB Bee

Thank you !

Visit us at:

http://www.webbee.org.br