The purpose of this work was to create an easy to interpret visualisation of a simple index that represents the quantity and quality of bird life in New Zealand. The index was calculated from an algorithm that assigned various weights to each species of bird.
This work is important as it forms a part of the ongoing work by the Cacophony Project which aims to eradicate pests that currently destroy New Zealand native birds and their habitat. The map will be used to promote the Cacophony project to a wide public audience and encourage their participation by giving relevant feedback on the effects of intervention such as planting and trapping in their communities.
The Design Science methodology guided this work through the creation of a series of prototypes that through their evaluation built on lessons learnt at each stage resulting in a final artifact that successfully displayed the index at various locations across a map of New Zealand.
It is concluded that the artifact is ready and suitable for deployment once the availability of real data from the automatic analysis of audio recordings from multiple locations becomes available.