UMass Amherst researchers develop Gulf spill iPhone app

iPhone users who come upon oiled birds and other wildlife from the Gulf Spill can can send the location and a photo to animal rescue networks using a free new iPhone app developed by University of Amherst researchers.

Called MoGO, for Mobile Gulf Observatory, the app is free and was funded in part from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.

Researchers hope the MoGO app will draw on the large network of “citizen scientists” who are actively looking for ways to help save wildlife along the 14,000 miles of northern Gulf coastline that could be impacted from the ongoing BP wellhead disaster.

The new app allows anyone who finds an oiled animal to be linked automatically by the phone to the Wildlife Hotline, and also to contribute photos of the stranded animal and its GPS location coordinates to a database here on campus,” says UMass Amherst wildlife biologist Curt Griffin.

The idea for the new app came to Charlie Schweik, associate director of the National Center for Digital Government, as he listened to yet another depressing story about the Gulf oil spill. Already working on invasive species mapping with computer scientist Deepak Ganesan, an expert in mobile phone and sensor systems, Schweik thought that experience might prove useful for inventorying damage in the Gulf. Smartphones such as the iPhone have several sensors including camera, GPS, audio, video, and acceleration, which all provide valuable data for such an application.

For more information go to www.savegulfwildlife.org.