15,928 research outputs found
Predicting Risk for Deer-Vehicle Collisions Using a Social Media Based Geographic Information System
Get PDFAs an experiment investigating social media as a data source for making management decisions, photo sharing websites were searched for data on deer sightings. Data about deer density and location are important factors in decisions related to herd management and transportation safety, but such data are often limited or not available. Results indicate that when combined with simple rules, data from photo sharing websites reliably predicted the location of road segments with high risk for deer-vehicle collisions as reported by volunteers to an internet site tracking roadkill. Use of Google Maps as the GIS platform was helpful in plotting and sharing data, measuring road segments and other distances, and overlaying geographical data. The ability to view satellite images and panoramic street views proved to be a particularly useful. As a general conclusion, the two independently collected sets of data from social media provided consistent information, suggesting investigative value to this data source. Overlaying two independently collected data sets can be a useful step in evaluating or mitigating reporting bias and human error in data taken from social media
Deer Herd Management Using the Internet: A Comparative Study of California Targeted By Data Mining the Internet
Get PDFAn ongoing project to investigate the use of the internet as an information source for decision support identified the decline of the California deer population as a significant issue. Using Google Alerts, an automated keyword search tool, text and numerical data were collected from a daily internet search and categorized by region and topic to allow for identification of information trends. This simple data mining approach determined that California is one of only four states that do not currently report total, finalized deer harvest (kill) data online and that it is the only state that has reduced the amount of information made available over the internet in recent years. Contradictory information identified by the internet data mining prompted the analysis described in this paper indicating that the graphical information presented on the California Fish and Wildlife website significantly understates the severity of the deer population decline over the past 50 years. This paper presents a survey of how states use the internet in their deer management programs and an estimate of the California deer population over the last 100 years. It demonstrates how any organization can use the internet for data collection and discovery
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