Journal:Leveraging conservation action with open‐source hardware

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Full article title Leveraging conservation action with open‐source hardware
Journal Conservation Letters
Author(s) Hill, Andrew P.; Davies, Alasdair; Prince, Peter; Snaddon, Jake L.; Doncaster, C. Patrick; Rogers, Alex
Author affiliation(s) University of Southampton, Zoological Society of London, University of Oxford
Primary contact Email: ah1u14 at soton dot ac dot uk
Year published 2019
Volume and issue 12(5)
Page(s) e12661
DOI 10.1111/conl.12661
ISSN 1755-263X
Distribution license Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
Website https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/conl.12661
Download https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/conl.12661 (PDF)

Abstract

Data collection by conservation biologists is undergoing radical change, with researchers collaborating across disciplines to create bespoke, low‐cost monitoring equipment from open‐source hardware (OSH). Compared to commercial hardware, OSH dramatically reduces participation costs. Four barriers currently hold back its wide adoption: (1) user inexperience inhibits initial uptake; (2) complex and costly manufacturing/distribution procedures impede global dissemination; (3) lack of creator support results in lapsed projects; and (4) lack of user support degrades continued utility in the field. Here, we propose a framework to address these barriers, illustrating how OSH offers a route to rapid expansion of community‐driven conservation action.

Introduction

Conservation policy urgently needs accessible, affordable, fit‐for‐purpose tools to address unprecedented reductions in global biodiversity and rise in illegal wildlife trade (IWT).[1] National governments are now committing to the wild‐tech sector, in which open science plays a vital role. For example, the U.K. government is funding initiatives to tackle IWT using innovative open data standards.[2] In this policy perspective, we identify current barriers to the wide adoption of open‐source technology and propose a framework for addressing them.

Over the last 30 years, conservation biology has seen a shift toward data transparency with the growth of open science, including open‐access journals, websites hosting open data, software and hardware, and sharing through social media.[3] The new openness has generated a profound change in the ways that hardware and software are developed, leading to conservation biologists collaborating with engineers to create bespoke tools for their specific applications.[4][5] Readily available open‐source hardware (OSH) is increasingly used in the rapid and cheap development of deployable prototypes.[6] The fields of conservation, ecology, and environmental sciences have seen an increased uptake in OSH over the last four years, with over a hundred publications reporting on scientific tools created using open‐source microcomputers, such as the Raspberry Pi or Arduino.[7][8][9][10][11][12][13]

The OSH designation refers to the intellectual property, design principles, and legality of freely available hardware design files, which in their most liberal form can be used to manufacture, distribute, and sell the physically constructed product. Design files consist of circuit‐board schematics, circuit‐board layout files, and the software source code that together permit construction of a piece of electronic hardware. OSH provides transparency, allowing full public scrutiny of designs to the benefit of their scientific integrity. Open designs create freedom to customize technology for specific applications.[14] The unrestricted access of developers to user needs, and users to developer designs, facilitates rapid community prototyping, either by centrally managed revisions based on user feedback or by user modifications on original designs.[15] The resulting self‐made equipment enables replicable data to be gathered at a lower cost than can be achieved with commercial hardware of equivalent utility.[16] These benefits have enabled OSH to colonize niches in technology markets previously unreachable by models based on intellectual property.[17]

Many barriers still lie in the way of implementing OSH for conservation purposes. Conservation practitioners must assemble the technology manually, generally with no support other than build instructions. Organizations formed around OSH find it difficult to obtain financial resources to continue development[18], often resulting in project termination soon after initial funds are spent.[19] New creators inadvertently reinvent tools when the design files of previously created equipment lapse or become lost. Commercial hardware retains an advantage in this respect with the higher financial outlay paying for product delivery, guarantees, and after‐sales care.

Overcoming current barriers to OSH will require (1) establishing procedures for the manufacture and distribution of hardware that facilitate access and dissemination among the conservation community; (2) financial support for product maintenance; (3) nontechnical instructions for implementing OSH; and (4) after‐sale support for continued utility in the field. Models now exist to support adoption of open‐source software, such as Canonical providing commercial services for consumers of Linux Ubuntu operating systems. Such frameworks are still lacking, however, to support the not‐for‐profit uptake and implementation of OSH for conservation. Although profitable businesses are being built around OSH, they meet a demand that comes principally from technically savvy users, capable of building their own hardware from published design files.[20] Conservation practitioners largely fall into a different category of user. They often have limited technical electronics know‐how, or they have limited resources for technical training. These users typically require others to build the hardware for them. They remain hard to target for OSH business models due to the complexities that go with hand fabricating hardware from an open design. With appropriate support, however, conservation practitioners are best placed to apply OSH to conservation actions.

Here, we introduce a provisional framework for developing and sustaining the life cycle of not‐for‐profit OSH for conservationists. The framework addresses current technical barriers to manufacture and presents simple guidelines for distribution, user accessibility, creator support, and user support. It comprises a set of defined product‐development processes that guide a collaborative team through the life cycle of an open‐source product, from construction and after‐sales support, to the reinvestment strategy that sustains the creators and community. We demonstrate an application of the framework with a real‐world case study of an OSH product in the form of an acoustic monitoring device.[21] The case study serves to illustrate how the framework unlocks useful technology for local communities, researchers funded by government research councils, and individuals funded by non‐government organizations (NGOs). In recent years, similar frameworks, such as Crowd Supply, have been shown to increase the adoption of proprietary products by consumers[22] and even to improve competitive advantage through crowdsourced tools.[23] We argue for wide adoption of flexible approaches of this sort by conservation NGOs and universities in particular. A framework can facilitate rapid uptake of OSH for conservation activities supported by these organizations, thereby fostering the proliferation of local‐scale projects that lead to global‐scale action.[24][25]

A framework to support OSH for conservation

The framework has six phases, each with formulated guidelines: (1) hardware, (2) manufacture, (3) release, (4) distribution, (5) support, and (6) sustainability. (See Figure 1.) The framework is formed around a management team consisting of a creator group (engineering team), which leads the technical developments of the technology, and a logistics group (funder/NGO/university), which leads logistical and financial operations. This unified entity requires an open and collaborative relationship between the two groups, with clear lines of responsibility (detailed in Table 1).


Fig1 Hill ConsLetters2019 12-5.jpg

Figure 1. An overview of the framework for developing, funding, supporting, and sustaining open‐source hardware (OSH) for conservation. The framework differs from a traditional business model for a commercial product in having open‐source licenses, relying on word‐of‐mouth in lieu of an advertising budget, allowing group‐purchase only, explicitly excluding housing for electronic components and guarantees on product performance, and outsourcing after‐sales care to web forums.

Table 1. Distribution of responsibilities for the management team, between the creator group, which focuses on hardware issues, and the logistics group, which focuses on assurance issues
Management team group Responsibility
Creator group

Conception of idea
Circuit design
Hardware development
Software development—website, firmware, supporting software and algorithm design
Prototyping
Bench testing
Field testing
Choosing appropriate manufacturers
Testing small‐batch build quality of chosen manufacturer
Sourcing components for crowd funding order
Testing alternative components if original components become obsolete
Website maintenance
Technical community support via website forum

Logistics group

nitiating crowd funded campaign
Taking payment from crowdfunding organisation
Co‐organising distribution of units
Assurance‐related community support via crowd funders website
Holding pool of funds
Distributing pool of funds to support technology development

Both groups Social media presence

The end users are the communities requiring the conservation hardware, such as local conservation activists, research scientists, educators, and wildlife enthusiasts. The framework provides a provisional set of management guidelines for OSH development, and a scalable method for the community to acquire and use the created technology. The framework generates a pool of crowdsourced funds out of unit sales margins obtained in the bulk manufacturing of hardware. Funds can be reinvested back into the hardware project to sustain its lifespan. In addition to providing support for creators and users, the framework minimizes the investment in human and financial capacity needed to initiate, manufacture, and distribute OSH. It makes use of new websites for crowdfunding and for turn‐key electronics manufacturing to provide tailored and cheap solutions for nontechnical conservation organizations. A framework can be viewed as successful if it is able to harness a large community of individuals to acquire low‐cost single units from a high-volume manufacturing process, while also creating extra funds to continue support. Success will depend on simple hardware construction to reduce overhead when manufacturing at bulk, and the timely orchestration of a large group of buyers to crowdfund industrial manufacture of the hardware.[26]

The initial “hardware” phase is the design stage, which commences after the creator group has proven the feasibility of using a particular technology for a desired conservation task. The proven hardware needs to be adapted to an open‐source design, and initial investment is required to fund this development. To open source a technology means to apply an open license to it. Various licenses are commonly used to define how OSH design files can be adapted, shared, or commercialized by the user community. (See Table 2.) Each license has its own benefits, depending on the goal. For example, the most open license, CC0, may be useful for community ownership of the design, thus allowing it to be shared, adapted, and commercialized without the need to attribute changes to the original creator(s). Any of the OSH licenses can be used in the framework. Oberloier and Pearce[27] detail formal procedures for designers of OSH.

Table 2. Comparison of the available Creative Commons OSH licenses
Creative Commons licenses Adaptations can be shared Commercial use
CC0 (No attribution) Yes Yes
Attribution (BY) Yes Yes
ShareAlike (CC BY‐SA) Yes, but must share alike Yes
NonCommercial (CC BY‐NC) Yes No
NonCommercial‐NoDerivatives (CC BY‐NC‐ND) No No
NoDerivatives (BY‐ND) No Yes
NonCommercial‐ShareAlike (CC BY‐NC‐SA) Yes, but must share alike No


References

  1. ↑ The Royal Society (8 October 2018). "Illegal wildlife trade". https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/projects/illegal-wildlife-trade/. 
  2. ↑ U.K. Government (31 January 2019). "Digital revolution to use the power of data to combat illegal wildlife trade and reduce food waste". https://www.gov.uk/government/news/digital-revolution-to-use-the-power-of-data-to-combat-illegal-wildlife-trade-and-reduce-food-waste. 
  3. ↑ Hampton, S.E.; Anderson, S.S.; Bagby, S.C. et al. (2015). "The Tao of open science for ecology". Ecosphere 6 (7): 1–13. doi:10.1890/ES14-00402.1. 
  4. ↑ Berger-Tal, O.; Lahoz-Monfort, J.J. (2018). "Conservation technology: The next generation". Conservation Letters 11 (6): e12458. doi:10.1111/conl.12458. 
  5. ↑ Kwok, R. (2017). "Field Instruments: Build it yourself". Nature 545: 253–55. doi:10.1038/nj7653-253a. 
  6. ↑ Pearce, J.M. (2014). "Laboratory equipment: Cut costs with open-source hardware". Nature 505 (7485): 618. doi:10.1038/505618d. PMID 24476879. 
  7. ↑ Ahmad, A.; Nadzri, M.M.M.; Rosli, I.M. et al. (2018). "Rapid Prototyping of Wireless Image Transmission for Wildlife (Tiger) Monitoring System - A Preliminary Study". Journal of Telecommunication, Electronic and Computer Engineering 10 (2-5): 75–79. http://journal.utem.edu.my/index.php/jtec/article/view/4354. 
  8. ↑ Nazir, S.; Newey, S.; Irvine, R.J. et al. (2017). "WiseEye: Next Generation Expandable and Programmable Camera Trap Platform for Wildlife Research". PLoS One 12 (1): e0169758. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0169758. PMC PMC5226779. PMID 28076444. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5226779. 
  9. ↑ Sankupellay, M.; McLaughlin, C.; Davis, J. et al. (2016). "B4 - Brisbane Backyard Bird Box: Connecting People to the Environment". Proceedings of the 2016 ACM Conference Companion Publication on Designing Interactive Systems: 9–12. doi:10.1145/2908805.2908808. 
  10. ↑ Soro, A.; Brereton, M.; Dema, T. et al. (2018). "The Ambient Birdhouse: An IoT Device to Discover Birds and Engage with Nature". Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems: 1–13. doi:10.1145/3173574.3173971. 
  11. ↑ Tan, T.F.; Teoh, S.S.; Fow, J.E. et al. (2016). "Embedded human detection system based on thermal and infrared sensors for anti-poaching application". Proceedings of the 2016 IEEE Conference on Systems, Process and Control: 37–42. doi:10.1109/SPC.2016.7920700. 
  12. ↑ Maina, C.W.; Muchiri, D.; Njoroge, P. (2016). "A Bioacoustic Record of a Conservancy in the Mount Kenya Ecosystem". Biodiversity Data Journal 4: e9906. doi:10.3897/BDJ.4.e9906. 
  13. ↑ Whytock, R.C.; Christie, J. (2017). "Solo: An open source, customizable and inexpensive audio recorder for bioacoustic research". Methods in Ecology and Evolution 8 (3): 308–12. doi:10.1111/2041-210X.12678. 
  14. ↑ Kling, J. (2018). "DIY goes in vivo". Lab Animal 47: 143–46. doi:10.1038/s41684-018-0066-z. 
  15. ↑ O'Mahony, S. (2007). "The governance of open source initiatives: what does it mean to be community managed?". Journal of Management and Governance 11 (2): 139–50. doi:10.1007/s10997-007-9024-7. 
  16. ↑ Drack, M.; Hartmann, F.; Bauer, S. et al. (2018). "The importance of open and frugal labware". Nature Electronics 1 (9): 484–86. doi:10.1038/s41928-018-0133-x. 
  17. ↑ Hsing, P.-Y. (2018). "Sustainable Innovation for Open Hardware and Open Science – Lessons from The Hardware Hacker". Journal of Open Hardware 2 (1): 4. doi:10.5334/joh.11. 
  18. ↑ Li, Z.; Seering, W.; Wallace, D. (2018). "Understanding Value Propositions and Revenue Models in Open Source Hardware Companies". Proceedings from the 2018 International Conference on Innovation and Entrepreneurship: 214–23. 
  19. ↑ Iacona, G.; Ramachandra, A.; McGowan, J. et al. (2019). "Identifying technology solutions to bring conservation into the innovation era". Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 17 (10): 591–98. doi:10.1002/fee.2111. 
  20. ↑ Pearce, J.M. (2017). "Emerging Business Models for Open Source Hardware". Journal of Open Hardware 1 (1): 2. doi:10.5334/joh.4. 
  21. ↑ Hill, A.P.; Prince, P.; Covarrubias, E.P. et al. (2017). "AudioMoth: Evaluation of a smart open acoustic device for monitoring biodiversity and the environment". Methods in Ecology and Evolution 9 (5): 1199–1211. doi:10.1111/2041-210X.12955. 
  22. ↑ Ilin, P.; Platis, D. Hammouda, I. (2018). "Insights into the Trilateral Relationship of Crowdfunding Campaigns, Open Source and Communities". Proceedings from the 2018 Open Source Systems: Enterprise Software and Solutions: 26–36. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-92375-8_3. 
  23. ↑ Nagle, F. (2018). "Learning by Contributing: Gaining Competitive Advantage Through Contribution to Crowdsourced Public Goods". Organization Science 29 (4): 547–753. doi:10.1287/orsc.2018.1202. 
  24. ↑ Arlettaz, R.; Schaub, M.; Fournier, J. et al. (2010). "From Publications to Public Actions: When Conservation Biologists Bridge the Gap between Research and Implementation". BioScience 60 (10): 835–42. doi:10.1525/bio.2010.60.10.10. 
  25. ↑ Pocock, M.J.O.; Chandler, M.; Bonney, R. et al. (2018). "A Vision for Global Biodiversity Monitoring With Citizen Science". Advances in Ecological Research 59: 169–223. doi:10.1016/bs.aecr.2018.06.003. 
  26. ↑ Kohler, T.; Chesbrough, H. (2019). "From collaborative community to competitive market: The quest to build a crowdsourcing platform for social innovation". R&D Management 49 (3): 356–68. doi:10.1111/radm.12372. 
  27. ↑ Oberloier, S.; Pearce, J.M. (2017). "General Design Procedure for Free and Open-Source Hardware for Scientific Equipment". Designs 2 (1): 2. doi:10.3390/designs2010002. 

Notes

This presentation is faithful to the original, with only a few minor changes to presentation. In some cases important information was missing from the references, and that information was added. The original article lists references alphabetically, but this version—by design—lists them in order of appearance. The Iacona et al. in-press article was updated with the now-published version.

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