Monitoring Wildlife-Vehicle Collisions in the Information Age: How Smartphones Can Improve Data Collection

BACKGROUND Currently there is a critical need for accurate and standardized wildlife-vehicle collision data, because it is the underpinning of mitigation projects that protect both drivers and wildlife. Gathering data can be challenging because wildlife-vehicle collisions occur over broad areas, during all seasons of the year, and in large numbers. Collecting data of this magnitude requires an efficient data collection system. Presently there is no widely adopted system that is both efficient and accurate. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS Our objective was to develop and test an integrated smartphone-based system for reporting wildlife-vehicle collision data. The WVC Reporter system we developed consisted of a mobile web application for data collection, a database for centralized storage of data, and a desktop web application for viewing data. The smartphones that we tested for use with the application produced accurate locations (median error = 4.6-5.2 m), and reduced location error 99% versus reporting only the highway/marker. Additionally, mean times for data entry using the mobile web application (22.0-26.5 s) were substantially shorter than using the pen/paper method (52 s). We also found the pen/paper method had a data entry error rate of 10% and those errors were virtually eliminated using the mobile web application. During the first year of use, 6,822 animal carcasses were reported using WVC Reporter. The desktop web application improved access to WVC data and allowed users to easily visualize wildlife-vehicle collision patterns at multiple scales. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE The WVC Reporter integrated several modern technologies into a seamless method for collecting, managing, and using WVC data. As a result, the system increased efficiency in reporting, improved accuracy, and enhanced visualization of data. The development costs for the system were minor relative to the potential benefits of having spatially accurate and temporally current wildlife-vehicle collision data.