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A look inside the Pl@ntNet experience

The good, the bias and the hope

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Abstract

Pl@ntNet is an innovative participatory sensing platform relying on image-based plants identification as a mean to enlist non-expert contributors and facilitate the production of botanical observation data. One year after the public launch of the mobile application, we carry out a self-critical evaluation of the experience with regard to the requirements of a sustainable and effective ecological surveillance tool. We first demonstrate the attractiveness of the developed multimedia system (with more than 90K end-users) and the nice self-improving capacities of the whole collaborative workflow. We then point out the current limitations of the approach towards producing timely and accurate distribution maps of plants at a very large scale. We discuss in particular two main issues: the bias and the incompleteness of the produced data. We finally open new perspectives and describe upcoming realizations towards bridging these gaps.

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Notes

  1. http://www.ebird.org/content/ebird/.

  2. http://www.inaturalist.org/.

  3. http://www.tela-botanica.org/.

  4. http://www.xeno-canto.org/.

  5. http://www.ispotnature.org/.

  6. http://www.identify.plantnet-project.org/.

  7. https://www.google.com/analytics.

  8. https://www.sites.google.com/site/fgcomp2013/.

  9. http://www.clef-initiative.eu/.

  10. http://www.landcover.org.

  11. http://www.gbif.org.

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Acknowledgments

This work was funded by the Agropolis Foundation, as part of its first flagship project Pl@ntNet. We would like to thank numerous contributors from Tela Botanica and Pl@ntNet’s network, that share their data and expertise to develop such infrastructure. Finally, we also would like to thank Mrs. Lett for his careful reading and helpful comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Inria, Lirmm, Montpellier, France

    Alexis Joly & Julien Champ

  2. CIRAD, AMAP, Montpellier, France

    Pierre Bonnet

  3. Inria, Saclay, France

    Hervé Goëau & Nozha Boujemaa

  4. Inra, AMAP, Montpellier, France

    Julien Barbe & Samuel Dufour-Kowalski

  5. Inria, Rocuencourt, France

    Souheil Selmi

  6. IRD, AMAP, Montpellier, France

    Antoine Affouard & Jean-François Molino

  7. Tela-Botanica, Montpellier, France

    Jennifer Carré

  8. CIRAD, BIOS, Montpellier, France

    Daniel Barthélémy

Authors
  1. Alexis Joly
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  2. Pierre Bonnet
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  3. Hervé Goëau
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  4. Julien Barbe
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  5. Souheil Selmi
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  7. Samuel Dufour-Kowalski
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  8. Antoine Affouard
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  9. Jennifer Carré
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  10. Jean-François Molino
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  11. Nozha Boujemaa
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  12. Daniel Barthélémy
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Correspondence to Alexis Joly.

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Joly, A., Bonnet, P., Goëau, H. et al. A look inside the Pl@ntNet experience. Multimedia Systems 22, 751–766 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00530-015-0462-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00530-015-0462-9

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