THE AMIBIO DATABASE: MANAGEMENT TOOL & INTERFACE

Project progress

Concept

AUTOMATIC ACOUSTIC MONITORING AND INVENTORYING OF BIODIVERSITY

THE AMIBIO TEAM

THE AMIBIO DATABASE: MANAGEMENT TOOL & INTERFACE by C. Tsimpouris, T. Kostoulas, O. Jahn, P. Grobe, and K. Riede

by T. Ganchev, I. Potamitis, O. Jahn, K. Riede, and N. Fakotakis

edited by T. Ganchev and O. Kocsis

AmiBio concept: The AmiBio project constructs and deploys autonomous multisensor monitoring stations and automatically analyzes their transmitted measurements, for long-term monitoring of biodiversity activity trends in the region of Hymettus, a mountainous area located at the eastern periphery of Athens. The acoustic monitoring stations, which are non-intrusive and cost-effective compared to human expeditions, will assist in systematic seasonal and longitudinal long-term environmental monitoring that will allow the automatic inventory and examination of the biological diversity of the study area.

Wire Communications Laboratory (WCL) at the University of Patras (UOP, www.wcl.ece.upatras.gr) is the coordinator and the main contributor to the AmiBio project, providing the overall framework for acquisition, communication and processing of environmental and bioacoustic information from the target areas at Hymettus. The WCL participates in AmiBio through its Artificial Intelligence Group (AIG), which has proven expertise on speech and audio processing and machine learning technologies. The recent technological advances in automatic identification of species and detection of pests from their sound emissions, constitute the foundation for the development of an automated bioacoustics surveillance system in open-air environments, such as those at Hymettus.

The monitoring stations will record audio signals, temperature, humidity, illumination, wind speed and direction and transmit these data to a central station far away from the monitoring region. Special computer software at the central station, deployed in the premises of the Association for Protection and Development of Hymettus (SPAY) and in the University of Patras, will then perform automatic species identification and statistical analysis, thus contributing to a continuous biodiversity survey of the designated areas. The project team plans to deploy the prototype hardware system in relevant habitats, such as forest, open habitats, and rock cliffs, that will gather and transmit recordings of audio and data on environmental variables to a central station (see Fig. 1). Expected outcomes from the project:        

Data repository of audio recordings and database management tools in support of research on bioacoustics and animal behaviour. Software for automatic recognition of species from their sound emissions. Prototype of an acoustic monitoring system operating in 24/7 mode. Estimation of the density of sound-emitting animal populations. Monitoring of rare and threatened species. Assessment of the conservation status of the monitored sites. Monitoring and alarming of specific atypical sound events, such as gunshots, off-road motor bikers, etc. Monitoring for natural calamity and human induced disasters.

At present, the prototype remote monitoring stations and the supporting database tools and software for bioacoustic recognition of species are implemented, and the field tests have started - further details are provided on pages 4-7.

Fig. 1. Schematic representation of the AmiBio concept

2

AMIBIO

The Technological Educational Institute of Crete (TEIC, www.teicrete.gr) is mainly involved in the automatic processing of generalized audio signals. As the problem is an emerging one, new techniques need to be developed and tested extensively so as to evaluate the applicability of the proposed technique with respect to biodiversity assessment task. TEIC has established strong collaborative research links with a large number of European and international Universities, research institutes and industrial companies. The Association for the Protection and Development of Hymettus Mountain (SPAY, www.spay.gr) is an association of the 15 municipalities that surround the mountain Hymettus. Its scope is to take action in protecting the mountain forest from fire and other dangers and to coordinate similar actions from the municipalitiesmembers. Since the equilibrium of trees and animals living in the mountain is vital for the survival of the forest, the project is giving SPAY the opportunity to study the animal life on the mountain, in order to advice authorities on future measures for forest protection. The Zoological Research Museum A. Koenig (ZFMK, Bonn, Germany, www.zfmk.de), founded as a private research and exhibition institute by Alexander Koenig (1858-1940), it is one of the major natural history research museums in Germany and a member of the Leibniz Association (WGL). Automated acoustic monitoring of wild animal species at Hymettus would not be possible without a good knowledge of the biodiversity present there. Species have to be inventoried and recordings of their vocalizations have to be gathered, identified, tagged, and archived in order to calibrate the sound identification software. These tasks are the main responsibilities of ZFMK in the AmiBio project, as the museum has earned its reputation as a leader in the documentation, research, and interpretation of biodiversity.

Automatic processing The AmiBio system foresees handling of a recordings huge quantity of data, mostly audio, to be recorded by the monitoring stations and conSound Signal Verification tinuously transmitted to the central station for statistical analysis. Handling the Petabytes Playback of data at the central station imposes many requirements with respect to the database See results of Automatic Processing functionality and the corresponding management tools. The preparatory Action A.8 creRevise Metadata ated a database repository, which will store the species records in a structured manner, and implemented the software tools for semiConfirm/Annotate ID Unidentified Sounds automatic annotation of the AmiBio recordings and database management (Fig.4). Save Sound Signal The main purpose of the database management tool is to provide access to the AmiBio Annotation/Metadata database and repository of the original sound repository Reference Sound Library recordings, processed audio signals, and refManagement Reference Sound erence recordings, which will facilitate the Library Edit Data Entries management of the audio files and related metadata. Within the AmiBio database, three main repositories have been foreseen: Statistics on the available recordings  Unidentified sounds: All recordings for which no annotation information exists. Preselecting potential Training Library  Reference sound library: All recordings training recordings which are linked with annotation/ metadata information. Editing of training recordings  Training library: All recordings which are confirmed as “excellent” ones. All the database management tools are exeTraining Library cuted through a web-based interface, which also enables users to annotate selected reEdit Data Entries cordings. The manual annotation of the recordings is performed using the external Statistics on the Training recordings standalone, and open source, application Praat (www.praat.org). Fig. 4. Architectural design of the database management tool In Fig.5 a snapshot of the database interface is presented, showing the functionality to browse through the original sound recordings. From this point, experts can navigate to other tables from top menus, can filter the search results and sort them according to their preferences. Furthermore the user may see detailed information in pop-up windows, download wav files for manual annotation or see a spectrogram of the sound file. Special effort was made to design a GUI, which is easy to navigate for all non-technical persons.

Fig. 5. Amibio database interface, with a pop-up window showing details of a monitoring station

AMIBIO

7

AmiBio

NEWSLETTER

Editorial

HYMETTUS MOUNTAIN FIRE PROTECTION MEASURES AND SPAY ACTIVITIES

With the contribution of the LIFE financial instrument of the European Union

by N. Hardalias, V. Nomikos, B. Dimitriou, and F. Celhay At present, the basic principles of ecology are not taught at school in Greece. People must become aware of these principles. With our actions and examples, the Union for the Protection and Development of Hymettus Mountain (SPAY) awakens awareness and sensitize the public about environmental protection.

WWW.AMIBIO-PROJECT.EU

LIFE+ NATURE AND BIODIVERSITY

In this sense, the objectives - actions for the Association are: 1. The cooperation of all municipalities-members, with the aim to protect the forest of Hymettus, the only remaining atmospheric lung between the old metropolitan area of Athens and the recent expansion of the city towards the new airport. 2. Reforestation in burned areas and protection of soils against landslides erosion, and flooding, which poses risks for the residential areas, assisting the natural regeneration of vegetation and enriching the water reserves of the mountain. 3. Mild interventions to regenerate the forest and the region in order to attract visitors at selected points, of forest recreation, for better control and isolation of malicious.

Contact Us Photo 2: SPAY team coordinating rubbish collection activities

4. Preventive actions for the protection of forest through the clearing of inflammable biomass, pruning, and awareness activities. Furthermore, environmental education of students, with lectures in schools, students visiting the forest to be informed about the flora and fauna of the Hymettus mountain and, particularly, measures to protect the environment and the forests. The seasonal employment of forest guards helps greatly for the early detection of unfortunate events.

E-mail: [email protected] Phone: +30 2610 996 496 http://www.amibio-project.eu/

C O N T E N T S

5. Coordinate the activities of voluntary forest protection groups, and assist with the purchasing of equipment and training in their fire-fighting skills, in cooperation with the Fire Brigade. Our fire season starts early, May the 1st every year and ends late, October the 31st. With the onset of the fire season, we invite the member municipalities, to put in readiness their services and appropriate vehicles and to cooperate with local volunteer groups in guarding the relevant forest areas, with the assistance of the seasonal personnel. Readiness exercises are planned in order to familiarize personnel with the equipment and their cooperation with the volunteers and the fire-fighters.

Photo 3: Rescue exercise by volunteers

The detection and prevention measures in affected areas, such as restriction/prohibition of vehicle circulation, informing of forest visitors and walkers, removing of potential causes that initiated fires on earlier occasions, the regular checking and filling of water tanks, and the maintenance of forest roads are among our initiatives. In our institution we believe that we can protect the environment and especially the forest of Hymettus with development measures. For this purpose, we have studied the conditions at the local level, taking into account the experience of other agencies and we are implementing national and European Union programs, like MEDSPA, Life Environment 525, LIFE AmiBio, LIFE Forest Cities, INTERREG EUROFINET, within a Photo 4: Mayor N. Hardalias, president of SPAY, with volunteers at Ergani reforestration site larger protection plan. Cover photos: Hymettus Mountain biodiversity; by A. Weller, ZFMK.

8

AMIBIO

Nikos Fakotakis, Project Coordinator Wire Communications Laboratory, University of Patras, 26500 Rion-Patras, Greece

Page 2

Page 6

The AmiBio Concept The AmiBio Team

Automatic Bird Species Detection in the Field

Page 3

Page 7

AmiBio - 2 Years of Activity

The AmiBio Database: Management Tools & Interface

Page 4 From baseline data to improved habitat management: AmiBio furthers biodiversity conservation in the Hymettus Mountains

Page 5 Hymettus Ears: the AmiBio Monitoring Stations

LIFE08 NAT/GR/000539

Page 8 Hymettus Mountain Fire Protection Measures and SPAY Activities

8th Issue, April 2012

Editorial

Project progress

AUTOMATIC BIRD SPECIES DETECTION IN THE FIELD

2 YEARS OF

ACTIVITY

by I. Mporas, T. Ganchev, I. Potamitis, N. Fakotakis, O. Kocsis, O. Jahn, and K. Riede by N. Fakotakis, O. Kocsis, T. Ganchev In AmiBio project our aim is the long-term automatic monitoring and alarming about the presence or absence of certain bird species in the Hymettus Mountain. In this scope, in AmiBio Action A.7, the project team developed a software framework for automated species recognition which: (i) Detects species of interest in very long real-field recordings (Terabytes of audio for a single recording station). Such amounts of data cannot not be manually processed or examined or annotated by human observers. The AmiBio software framework addresses the practical limitations of handling enormous amounts of data and the unknown boundaries of the bird vocalizations. (ii) Operates on real-field audio recordings, most of which are characterized by poor quality. The real-field audio recording includes all kinds of acoustic degradations encountered in nature, such as wind, rain, interfering audio sources, frequency selective attenuation due to distance and acoustic reflections. The AmiBio approach for handling these difficulties is based on two-pass processing of the audio recordings. The first pass is fast and designed to screen out most of the irrelevant audio events but allowing many false alarms. The second pass is designed to elaborate and exact, and, therefore, computationally intensive. Specifically, we first apply a statistical sound activity detector to reduce the original training data and to annotate automatically all available data. For this purpose, we apply a global bird detector on the data aiming to reduce the search space to a subset of audio segments that is composed only of bird vocalizations. At this stage, portion of the bird vocalizations that were detected can be manually verified, and used for improving/adaptation of the global bird detector. The adapted global bird detector is then reapplied to the search space. Finally, a more sophisticated detector, designed to recognize certain species, is applied to the audio segments selected by the global bird detector. This concept is illustrated in Fig.3. In brief, the audio signal is captured by a microphone, next amplified and then (re)sampled at 32 kHz, so that the wide frequency range of bird vocalizations from various species is covered. Precision of 16-bits per audio sample is used to guarantee sufficient resolution of details for the subsequent processing of the signal. After audio acquisition the signal is decomposed to overlapping feature vectors of constant length, using spectral and temporal audio parameterization algorithms. The sequence of feature vectors is used as input to the bird activity detection block, where the audio signal is binary segmented to intervals with or without bird vocalizations. Finally, the bird vocalization intervals are processed by the bird species classification block for species-specific recognition. The presence of non-stationary noises, originating from the environment, makes the species recognition task quite challenging. The degree of interference of the environmental noise and the actual sound-to-noise ratio are crucial for the recognition of bird species. Experimental Bird vocalizations results on the real-field AmiBio recordings indicated a Environmental noise classification accuracy of approximately 77% (SNR=-6dB) Audio aquisittion up to 90% (SNR=20dB), which is not sufficient for fullyautonomous surveillance applications, but significantly contributes to efficient use of the time of human-experts and improves the efficiency of area management. Audio parameterization The traditional manual observations during filed trips Data storage heavily rely on the availability of human experts and on the visual and acoustic abilities of the individual experts, as well as on the degree of knowledge of the surveyor on the under investigation group of bird species. Due to the Bird activity detection difficulty of the task, most surveys take place at infrequent time intervals, and do not allow for the long-term biodiversity monitoring of inhospitable habitats. The effort for post-processing recordings from field trips inBird species classification cludes recognition of bird species from their vocalizations. Such post-processing of field data usually is timeconsuming, tedious, and expensive since it requires the labour of expert ornithologists. From this perspective, the automated technology for bird identification can also Recognized birds significantly improve the handling and the management of the large amount of information that has been colFig. 3. Block diagram of the bird species recognition scheme in real field lected during field trips. conditions

6

AMIBIO

On February 1st, 2012, the AmiBio team celebrated the second anniversary of the project start. Looking back at the long list of activities, achievements, and the main events during these two years, we are proud to report continuous and steady progress, progress that allows a successful completion of project objectives. Our pride and confidence is supported by the achievements of the AmiBio project team, which went beyond what was initially planned in the contract, achievements that have the potential to make a real contribution for the preservation of biodiversity at Hymettus Mountain in the decades to come. Specifically, during the first year of the AmiBio project three preparatory actions were completed successfully. These included activities devoted to: (a) the elaboration of detailed AmiBio project management plan (Action A.1); (b) the preparation of a baseline for a future conservation action plan for Hymettus (Action A.2); (c) the user requirement analysis and the specifications of technology design aspects (Action A.3), which placed the ground for the technology development actions (Action A.4-A.8). The aforementioned three achievements contributed to three parallel dimensions of the project implementation. While the project management plan specified the administrative planning of work for the entire duration of AmiBio and placed the ground for successful coordination of the project activities, the work on a baseline proposal for a future conservation plan offered the AmiBio vision about future conservation of biodiversity at Hymettus area. Next, the activities correlating with the user requirement analysis and the specifications of the technology design aspects investigated in-depth the expected functional requirements to the AmiBio technology and prioritized the implementation of this technology in terms of mandatory, optional and desired functionality. Action A.4 had the goal to transform these user requirements to a blueprint for the technology developed within the second year of the AmiBio project. After the first year of the project, the AmiBio team had in disposition well over 1000 hours of own wide-band two-channel audio recordings (over 1 TB of data), collected from different locations in the Hymettus area. This amount quickly increased with every subsequent recording campaign, and by the end of the second year of the project (February 2012) reached over 5 TB of data. These collection campaigns are foreseen to continue at least until the end of the project, in parallel with the automatic system. Coming towards the end of the second year of AmiBio project implementation, most of the preparatory actions were completed, placing the ground for the field tests and preparation of the final phase of the project, namely the installation of the permanent monitoring system. In Action A.6 the wireless sensor network architecture and communication protocols have been established. Action A.7 “Development of software framework for data collection, pre-processing and delivery”, which started in January 2011 has been completed by November 30. Besides of the software framework for bioacoustic recognition of species, this action developed also the administrative interface for the remote monitoring stations, which provides control and management functionality, area surveillance and automated alerting mechanisms. Action A.8, “Development of data repository and appropriate database management tools”, provides the necessary infrastructure for data storage and management, through the implemented database and management tools. The last preparatory action, A.9 “System Integration and in-lab trials”, has started in September 2011 and will continue until the end of May 2012. The components and subsystems developed within actions A.5-A.8 have been integrated within this action, and the robustness of the entire system in laboratory conditions tested. The completion of this task allows for field tests and evaluation of the AmiBio system within the Actions E.3, E.4 and E.5. In the last quarter of the second year of the project, the AmiBio web site has been redesigned and the project acquired a new web portal, which integrates the necessary functionality for the real-time management of the monitoring system and the interface to the AmiBio database (accessible only for the project partners). The sections accessible to the public have been redesigned considering friendlier page layouts and many dynamic elements. The AmiBio brochure in Greek and English languages has been published in over 500 copies, two on-site panels have been deployed at the Hymettus Mountain, 7 regular issues in English language and one special issue in German language of the AmiBio newsletter have been published. In addition, AmiBio was present at public awareness and dissemination events, among which:      

the NGO “Eco Technologia” conference in Athens, Greece the XXIII meeting of the International Bioacoustics Council (IBAC 2011) in La Rochelle, France the International Conference on Ecosystems, Environment and Sustainable Development (ICEESD 2011) in Venice, Italy the Monitoring and Securing Biodiversity Conference in Brussels, Belgium the 4th Latin America Symposium “Monitoring and Securing Biodiversity” (LAS 2011) in Bonn, Germany the Info Day organized by ZFMK in the scope of the “Museum-Mile Festival”, which is organized once a year in June by several museums along the Adenauerallee in Bonn, Germany  various activities conducted by SPAY: the interview of SPAY’s president Nikos Hardalias, Mayor of Byron Municipality, to SKY TV; (ii) the presentation of the project to the general public and young students during rubbish collection actions in the mountain; and (iii) the introduction given to the Russian regional chiefs for civil protection (EMERCOM) that visited SPAY in December, 2011 In conclusion, the first two years of the AmiBio project demonstrated excellence, and the project achievements make us quite optimistic about the opportunities for preservation of the biodiversity of species and of the beauty of the Hymettus Mountain for the future generations.

AMIBIO

3

Project progress

FROM BASELINE DATA TO IMPROVED HABITAT MANAGEMENT —AMIBIO FURTHERS BIODIVERSITY CONSERVATION IN THE HYMETTUS MOUNTAINS by O. Jahn, K. Riede, P. Grobe, G.U.C. Lehmann, U. Marckmann, K.-L. Schuchmann, R. van den Elzen, A. Weller, T. Kostoulas and S. Ntalampiras Automated acoustic monitoring of wildlife in the “Hymettus Natura 2000” area would not be possible without a good knowledge of the animals present there. Species have to be inventoried and recordings of their vocalizations have to be gathered, identified, tagged, and archived in order to train the sound identification algorithms. Furthermore, effective and efficient data management tools, such as databases and user interfaces, are needed to translate the terabytes of AmiBio audio recordings into something meaningful for conservation practitioners. These tasks describe the main responsibilities of the Zoological Research Museum A. Koenig (ZFMK) within the AmiBio project. Between March 2010 and May 2011 we carried out a total of 11 biodiversity surveys, three for insects, seven for birds, and one for bats. Insects were collected, observed, and photographed in the field. Birds are much better known than insects, thus, only audiovisual survey methods were used for this group. During most months of the project we also made unassisted sound recordings, using commercial digital recorders (Song Meter recorders, Wildlife Acoustics Inc.; www.wildlifeacoustics.com/products/acoustic-monitoring). Until the end of April 2012 we made 10,000+ hours of stereo recordings (48kHz, 16 bit) at five Hymettus sites, corresponding to roughly 7 TB of audio data. In addition, we have compiled about 16,000 audio recordings of about 325 animal species for the AmiBio reference sound library. The sources for this comprehensive sound collection were online archives and commercial audio publications (see AmiBio Newsletter, April 2011 issue at www.amibio-project.eu). Since May 2011 we noted some additional species during the establishment of the 17 permanent AmiBio sound recording stations and while revising parts of the aforementioned Hymettus sound recordings. As a result the list of sound-producing animals known to occur in the study area increased to 178 species: 25 insects, 1 amphibian, 11 reptiles, 126 birds, and 15 mammals. As for the birds, ZFMK staff has recorded a total of 95 species, 13 of which were not previously reported from the Hymettus by other authors. The list of bats increased from previously two to eight species. However, we are well aware of the fact that our list of orthopterans, cicada, and land vertebrates is not at all conclusive. For instance, apart of the bird species that are already known to occur in the Hymettus, we estimate that about 150 additional species might occur there at least seasonally on migration. Considering the geographic position of the study site at the coast of the Mediterranean sea northwest of Crete and the southern Aegean Islands, it is evident that the Hymettus massif is a transit area for many avian long-distance migrants. Even unexpected birds might show up from time to time, like the Lemon-rumped Warbler Phylloscopus proregulus, a species of eastern Asian distribution, which was observed in the area of Monastery Kaisariani in early April 2011 (see AmiBio Newsletter, April 2011 issue at www.amibio-project.eu). Of course, the occurrence of vagrants, like the aforementioned warbler, is irrelevant for conservation planning purposes. By contrast, the status of globally and regionally threatened species is particularly important in this context. Excluding the non-breeding birds from the analysis, Hermann’s Tortoise Testudo hermanni and Common Bent-wing Bat Miniopterus schreibersii are Near Threatened and the Lesser Kestrel Falco naumanni Vulnerable at the global level (IUCN 2011). On the regional scale of the European Community 17 non-bird vertebrates are regarded in need of strict protection under the FFH Directive, among them one amphibian, eight reptile, and eight bat species (EC 1992, Annex IV). Of these species, European Ratsnake Zamenis situla, Hermann's Tortoise Testudo hermanni, Marginated Tortoise Testudo marginata, Common Bent-wing Bat Miniopterus schreibersii, Lesser Horseshoe Bat Rhinolophus hipposideros, Blasius’s Horseshoe Bat Rhinolophus blasii, and an unidentified horseshoe bat Rhinolophus sp. require the designation of special areas of conservation, such as Natura 2000 areas (EC 1992, Annex II). Furthermore, 25 avian species are listed in Annex 1 of the Bird Directive (EC 2010), and thus depend on the protection of certain habitats (special protection areas). Of the latter group, 9 avian species are breeding at Hymettus, whereas 16 are non-breeding visitors. Of particular relevance for the design of habitat management measures is the fact that most animal species of conservation concern inhabit open and semi-open habitats rather than forests and woodland. For instance, the European Green Toad Pseudepidalea viridis, prefers semi-open, often disturbed, habitats over continuous forests. Likewise, the reptiles listed in the FFH directive live in habitats like calcareous rocky slopes, phrygana, maquis, and at forest edges but avoid dense continuous forests. In the case of birds, 18 species (72%) listed in Annex I of the Bird Directive live in open and semi-open habitats, while only four are forest-dwellers (16%). In contrast, bats are extremely selective with respect to their roost sites (e.g., crevices in rocky slopes or buildings, caves, and tree cavities) but opportunistic regarding their feeding habitat. However, it must be emphasized that pine forests are not well suited as bat feeding habitat, in difference to broadleaved forests, which are used by many bat species. In conclusion, thanks to the faunal surveys in the scope of the AmiBio project we were able to provide biodiversity-related baseline information for a future conservation plan. However, the development of a widely accepted conservation plan and its effective implementation in the conservation practice must consider relevant international and national laws, conventions, and initiatives, which together should be weighted against the needs and interests of the many stakeholder groups affecting the fauna and flora of the Hymettus area. Evidently, the latter task is far beyond the scope of the AmiBio project. References EC. 1992. Council Directive 92/43/EEC on the Conservation of natural habitats and of wild fauna and flora. Online at http://ec.europa.eu/environment/nature/legislation/ habitats-directive/index_en.htm, last accessed 17 September 2010. EC. 2010. Directive 2009/147/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 30 November 2009 on the conservation of wild birds. Online at http:// ec.europa.eu/ environment/nature/legislation/birdsdirective/index_en.htm, last accessed on 14 September 2010.IUCN. 2011. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, version 2011.2. Online at http://www.iucnredlist.org, last accessed on 25 April 2012.

4

AMIBIO

Project progress

HYMETTUS EARS: THE AMIBIO MONITORING STATIONS by T. Ganchev, K. Birkos, I. Potamitis, I. Mporas, and T. Kostoulas The AmiBio remote monitoring stations aim at systematic seasonal and longitudinal long-term environmental monitoring, that will allow the automatic inventory and examination of the biological diversity in the region of Hymettus Mountain. The AmiBio monitoring stations (cf. Photo 1) are designed to be compact, transportable, and powered by solar energy. Their function is to record audio and climate data and to transmit these measurements through wireless networks to a distant central station for automatic statistical analysis. For the needs of the AmiBio project we selected a communication concept which relies on existing infrastructure for 3G wireless communication in the region of Hymettus Mountain and on existing IP network infrastructure. This design allows the implementation of a cost-effective solution, which meets the requirements of the AmiBio project and, and, at the same time, has a generic character and it can be easily adapted to the needs of other similar projects. The most significant advantage of this concept is its greatest portability and easy relocation of the sound recording stations to different micro-sites for which coverage by the commercial 3G wireless networks is available. This concept also guarantees the lowest cost for equipment, the lowest maintenance cost, and offers the most convenient setup. For the implementation of this concept the AmiBio project benefits from a bilateral memorandum for partnership with COSMOTE (www.cosmote.gr). The successful completion of the research and technology development activities in the AmiBio Actions A.5 and A.6 resulted in an operational prototype of the sound recording stations, together with a costeffective solution for data acquisition and transmission to the remote central station. During the third year of the AmiBio project implementation, within Action E.5, sixteen sound recording stations will be de- Photo 1: Prototype sound recording station during field tests at micro-site HYM005/ Rock cliff of Lake Vouliagmeni ployed at Hymettus Mountain and will start continuous monitoring of the acoustic activity of animals and the environmental parameters at the selected micro-sites. These micro-sites, selected during Action A.2 “Development of conservation action plan”, cover the four most important habitat types at Hymettus, and are expected to provide statistical coverage of the Hymettus fauna. Each of the sixteen sound recording stations is designed to guarantee real-time transmission of multichannel audio data, together with information about the environmental parameters at the specific micro-site. The architecture of the sound recording stations is modular (cf. Fig. 2), making the maintenance of the system cost-effective and the AmiBio Sound Recording Station reconfiguration of the hardware fast and convenient. Each AmiBio monitoring station integrates the following func3G modem tionality:  Data acquisition: 3 audio channels sampled at 48 kHz and USB hub 2 Luminosity sensor one ultrasound channel (sampled at 96 kHz or up to 250 kHz)  Wireless connectivity: ability to transmit data through celluWeather lar (GSM, 3G) and wireless mesh networks (802.11). station  Local environment monitoring: wind speed and direction, rainfall, temperature, relative humidity, atmospheric pressure, illumination, etc.  Autonomous operation: reliance to renewable energy sources (solar panels). The audio and environmental data, once transmitted to the base station, undergo statistical processing to extract the biodiversity related information. In addition, the statistical data processing Single board computer allows for automated surveillance and 24/7 monitoring for danger and crisis events at various locations in the mountain. The USB hub 1 deployment of automated data recording stations at Hymettus offers the means for non-intrusive and cost-effective remote monitoring of the area, which is not the case with human expeditions, and offers better protection against forest fires and Audio acqusition channels 14 illegal human activities. Solar panel, charger, battery Fig. 2. Overall architecture of the prototype sound recording station

AMIBIO

5