GPS collars data visualization for wildlife management

The main goal of the current work is to mobilize knowledge for conserving and managing biodiversity using the latest available technologies. The current paper propose the visualization of GPS data into a web application using Google Maps or another public internet map. The GPS data obtained from wildlife equipped with collars is represented using relational databases (Microsoft SQL Database and the recent introduced Geography type), analytical data structure (using OLAP cubes, with SQL Server Analysis Services) and a biodiversity management web application with a user friendly interface. The web application is available to any authenticated user to view at a glance the monitored area details and different monitoring information, according to user role access rights. Our main goal is to allow different categories of users to be properly informed: from simple interested public allowed to see some general information to decision makers to help them objectively assess the real situation or managing specialist to assist in their current activity with continuous and comprehensive monitoring information as support for field actions. The application was designed to be able to efficiently handle large quantities of GPS point records as in the future we expect along with technology advances, more and more raw data will be available. We mainly focused on three aspects: a) fast, scalable and flexible data storage model based on distributed databases, b) efficient communication with Google maps API and c) analytical data structure (OLAP) able to directly provide compressed data packages for viewing purpose and also to be able to scale information at different map zoom levels.