SpeciesID - Automated Species Identification from Image, Coordinates and Time Stamp
2024 - 2028
SpeciesID is a platform that offers automatic identification of species in Switzerland. Currently, the identification of vascular plants is offered (FlorID). For the future, solutions for other species groups are planned, and potentially applications for identifying species communities or phenological states. SpeciesID consists of an Application Programming Interface (API) and a test app through which species can be automatically identified by users who are in the field and provide images and coordinates.
Application Programming Interface (API)
The SpeciesID API was developed in collaboration with the Swiss Data Science Center and offers automatic species identification based on images, coordinates, and the timestamp of an observation. Currently, the developer version of FlorID is hosted at the endpoint /florid.
FlorID
FlorID was developed in the COMECO project in close collaboration with the National Data and Information Center of the Swiss Flora. It can be accessed in a more user-friendly version via a website (https://florid.ch/) or as a module in the popular FlorApp. The WSL access is a developer version designed to test improvements and further developments, as well as to provide more detailed outputs. These outputs help in understanding in detail how images and habitat conditions have contributed to an identification.
FlorID evaluates up to five images, coordinates, and observation dates, and can distinguish over 3000 plant species with high accuracy. It returns a ranked list of the most probable species, sorted by image information, habitat conditions, or their combination. Additionally, probabilities for selected species can be queried. A publication with detailed information on input and output will be available in the near future.
Further identification tools planned
In the medium term, we plan to offer identification tools for additional groups of species via the SpeciesID API, perhaps for birds, butterflies, or fungi. Moreover, developments are being considered for evaluating the phenology of plants (flowering, fruiting, etc.), or for identifying species communities and habitat types.
Test App
The SpeciesID App provides a flexible environment in which FlorID can be tested. The SpeciesID App is designed to easily integrate and test additional APIs that distinguish other species groups. Although the SpeciesID App does not offer a graphically optimized user interface, it allows detailed insight into the raw output of the API, which reveals how image information and habitat characteristics have contributed to an identification.
The SpeciesID App and API do not collect user data. All data received are deleted after the identification process. However, we point out that all automatically generated identifications can be prone to errors. We make no warranty as to their accuracy and reliability. As a general guideline, low confidence levels indicate uncertain identifications, but high confidence levels do not guarantee correct identification.
