Information Visualization and Organization for Participatory Monitoring of Invasive Alien Species

The participation of citizen volunteers plays an important role in the control and monitoring of invasive alien species because of its potentially wide spatial and temporal coverage. To support citizen participation, an information system that presents the achievement of activities needs to be developed to enhance the motivation of participants. This challenge was discussed in the context of the capture program started in Hokkaido, Japan in 2006, for invasive alien species, Bombus terrestris, and the this program’s Website, "SeiyouStatus" (http://dias.tkl.iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp/seiyou/). We start by proposing four types of views for visualizing and organizing capture records, and discuss the usage of the textual data obtained from casual communications between researchers and participants. We then illustrate an example of environment visualization, and demonstrate the importance of warning maps for illuminating high invasion risks and prioritizing actions.