contributed articles
BLOGGING BIRDS IS a novel artificial intelligence
program that generates creative texts to communicate
telemetric data derived from satellite tags fitted to red
kites — a medium-size bird of prey — as part of a
species reintroduction program in the U.K. We
address the challenge of communicating telemetric
sensor data in real time by enriching it with
meteorological and cartographic data, codifying
ecological knowledge to allow creative interpretation
of the behavior of individual birds in respect to such
enriched data, and dynamically generat-
ing informative and engaging data-driv-
en blogs aimed at the general public.
Geospatial data is ubiquitous in today’s world, with vast quantities of
telemetric data collected by GPS receivers on, for example, smartphones
and automotive black boxes. Adoption of telemetry has been particularly striking in the ecological realm,
where the widespread use of satellite
tags has greatly advanced our understanding of the natural world.
14, 23 Despite its increasing popularity, GPS
telemetry involves the important
shortcoming that both the handling
and the interpretation of often large
amounts of location data is time consuming and thus done mostly long after the data has been gathered.
10, 24 This
hampers fruitful use of the data in nature conservation where immediate
data analysis and interpretation are
needed to take action or communicate
to a wider audience.
25, 26
The widespread availability of GPS
data, along with associated difficulties
interpreting and communicating it in
real time, mirrors the scenario seen with
other forms of numeric or structured
data. It should be noted that the use of
computational methods for data analysis per se is hardly new; much of science
depends on statistical analysis and associated visualization tools. However, it is
generally understood that such tools are
mediated by human operators who take
responsibility for identifying patterns in
Blogging
Birds:
Telling Informative
Stories About
the Lives
of Birds from
Telemetric Data
DOI: 10.1145/3231588
The system transforms raw telemetric data
into engaging and informative blog texts
readily understood by all.
BY ADVAITH SIDDHARTHAN, KAPILA PONNAMPERUMA,
CHRIS MELLISH, CHEN ZENG, DANIEL HEPTINSTALL,
ANNIE ROBINSON, STUART BENN, AND RENÉ VAN DER WAL
key insights
˽ Summarizing environmentally enriched
satellite-tag data in the form of
informative, engaging, and fluent blogs is
a challenge, even for trained ecologists,
and computer-generated blogs were
preferred by readers.
˽ Natural language generation, specifically
data-to-text technology, is sufficiently
advanced to achieve more than just
factual summarization of data for
professional use.
˽ This development opens new avenues
for addressing societal challenges
related to communicating data
effectively and engaging the public with
scientific research.