Space Apps Challenge 2017

The Animal Watch app is designed as a kid-friendly smartphone app for finding, reporting sightings, and learning about wildlife. Users can view the location of recent sightings and read brief descriptions of the animals seen there. Users can also report a sighting of an animal by selecting the location and type of animal. Dangerous animals are marked as such and the user is notified to stay at a safe distance when these are selected.

We built the Animal Watch as a webapp optimized for viewing on smartphones. We built a PostgreSQL database with a Go back end, running on a Haroku server. The front end is built in React JavaScript. Our map interfaces and overlays use the Google Maps API. Wildlife data was gathered from the Parks Dept. Yellowstone visitor guides.

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Pitch:

Greetings Citizens,

I invite you to join the Animal Watch. Your mission is to find and observe the wildlife in Yellowstone National Park. But this task is too big for one person. That's why your fellow watchmen already helped you by spotting the animals in your area. If the tracks are fresh, the pin will be jumping. You can find out more information about the animals as well their location by clicking on the pin.

Now it's time for you to return the favor. Go out there and explore. If you see an animal, share this information. Click on New Sighting, adjust the location, select animal type, then the animal itself and take a picture.

Click Submit and your fellow watchmen in the area will be notified with a text.

But don't think for a second that this is just for your entertainment. We will be collecting the data to use in the research to track animal population and migration. We expose the data for the scientist across the globe to analyze and study.

So... Are you ready to JOIN THE ANIMAL WATCH?