An Expedition for Everyone: Open Data in the Okavango – News Watch

"By their nature, expeditions are dangerous. Wild animals, treacherous terrain, painful labor—a lot is risked in sending groups of people into the extreme. So why do we do it? Historically, the answer has been one of two things: for money, or for measurement. In the first case, expeditions might have brought back tons of ivory, or iridescent butterfly wings, or unusual gemstones. In the second, they returned with records and observations of rare places, noteworthy phenomena, or peculiar species. In either case, there was an exclusivity attached to an expedition—hard-to-get things from hard-to-reach places. This largely remains the case. A difficult expedition offers scientists a way to get data that is unavailable to their peers. It offers a documentarian the chance to get footage that no one else can get. What happens if we keep all of the hard work of an expedition, but we get rid of this exclusivity of the results? What happens if we give it all away? This is the central idea behind our efforts with 'Into the Okavango' and with the Okavango Wilderness Project. Using a set of open-source tools, we’ve developed a system that puts every piece of data we collect onto the web, in near real-time, for anyone in the world to use and share. Here’s an example of how it works ..."