Project collaborators
Zuzana Burivalova and Laura Berman, Forest and Wildlife Ecology
Abe Megahed and Finn Kuusisto, DSI
Project summary
“Our lab struggled for a long time to find a remotely accessible platform that could store all of our data and still be accessible to our international collaborators without becoming prohibitively expensive. The folks from the Data Science Institute have been extremely helpful in putting together an S3 database for us, guiding us on how best to structure our data, and are always quick to respond with any of our troubleshooting.”
– Laura Berman
The SoundForestLab Database enables the storage and sharing of a large database of ecological soundscape recordings. An audio soundscape is a useful tool for measuring biodiversity because it is an effective proxy for the level of biodiversity, but it is easier to measure than visual sightings or other metrics. This project addressed (1) how to store and manage a very large amount of audio data (~30 – 100TB), (2) how to make this data accessible to a diverse team of collaborators that is distributed around the world with varying levels of internet access and technical abilities, and (3) how to do so at a reasonable cost.
DSI investigated various storage options that would meet the project’s needs at a reasonable cost. Ultimately, we decided to go with UW—Madison’s S3 service because of its low cost and ease of setup and administration. To make the data easily accessible to the SoundForestLab collaborators, we deployed a web front end in Sharedigm, a cloud-based data storage and sharing system.
Project outputs/deliverables
Web application, available at a private URL to SoundForestLab project members
Project start and end dates
01/2024 – 03/2024