The CATAMI Story – the key to unlock the potential of marine imagery Luke Edwards - iVEC, Perth, Australia, [email protected] Jenni Harrison1, Stefan Williams2, Mat Wyatt1, Lachlan Toohey2, Mark Gray1, Dan Marrable1, Ariell Friedman2, Daniel Steinberg, Derrick Wong1 1 iVEC, Perth, Australia, 2 Australian Centre for Field Robotics, University of Sydney, Australia, INTRODUCTION Transforming raw underwater imagery into quantitative information useful for science and policy decisions requires substantial manual effort by human experts. This process is already unsustainable with the volume of marine imagery being collected increasing daily due to technological advances in image acquisition and resolution. Currently there is a lack of standardisation to the methodology, annotation, classification and analysis of marine imagery. This makes comparison and analysis of images collected from disparate sites and locations challenging. The CATAMI (Collaborative and Annotation Tools for Analysis of Marine Imagery and video) Project aims to help solve some of these issues by working in collaboration with the NERP Marine Biodiversity Hub - Theme 1 and the Australian marine research community to develop various web-based software tools. The main deliverables for the CATAMI Project are to create tools that support: a) Online data access and browsing; b) Analysis and annotation of data; c) Automated image classification; and d) Integration with Australian Ocean Data Network (AODN) By partnering with the marine ecology community, the current fragmented approach to data collection can be united by creating and adopting easy-to-use workflows where marine researchers can generate quantitative, sharable information to help support manage Australia's marine environment. This project includes development funded by the National eResearch Collaboration Tools and Resources (NeCTAR) and Australian National Data Service (ANDS) projects. RESULTS The Project Team have worked with key researchers from our user group (CATAMI Technical Working Group) to overcome significant challenges and create a workable national classification scheme (Figure 1) as part of the CATAMI Project. The CATAMI classification scheme will assist the whole marine community by enabling aggregation, annotation and automated processing of imagery in a standard way, thereby assisting marine organisations to save resources. Figure 1: High-level overview of the CATAMI classification scheme. Numbers indicate 1st level of hierarchy (1) or second (2). Brisbane | Australia 20–25 Oct | 2013 7th eResearch Australasia Conference The detailed approach used by the Project team could easily be applied to non-marine based projects and lessons learned from the methods adopted will now be described. When developing this classification it was identified early that there was a need for a sustainable and easy method for researchers to use and incorporate into their workflows. Codes for Australian Aquatic Biota (CAAB) is a managed and expanding 8-digit coding system for aquatic organisms in the Australian region maintained by CSIRO Division of Marine and Atmospheric Research. Through negotiation, the CAAB has been expanded to incorporate the CATAMI classification. This will provide sustainability as the ‘point of truth’ database that resides and will continue to reside at CSIRO. For further details of the CATAMI classification scheme refer to the CATAMI wiki - https://github.com/catami/catami/wiki/CATAMI-Classification-Scheme. Development of the CATAMI Project software tools began August 2012 and continues using Agile methodology. To date, Project CATAMI has built various tools, one of which successfully supports the browsing of marine images from campaigns and deployments. The early versions of this tool were problematic, essentially being too slow at rendering location points from deployments. This was highlighted as a key challenge. However by successfully deploying Geoserver WMS in the latest versions of the tool, the render time has dramatically decreased. CATAMI tools can support the creation of projects, which are a set of data (images and associated metadata) that can be prepared by a user for further analysis, downloading or sharing. Users can then create ‘worksets’ where they can start to ‘annotate’ images using the CATAMI classification scheme. The first version of these capabilities are shown below in Figure 2. Figure 2: Project CATAMI annotation capabilities. Within the CATAMI Project from the outset, iterative development of software was guided by fortnightly user feedback during Technical Working Group meetings (https://github.com/catami/catami/wiki/Fortnightly- TWG-review-meetings). Close engagement with the end community has ensured that the tools being developed are both useful and fit for purpose. Over the course of the project, software has been subject to usability tests (https://github.com/catami/catami/wiki/Usability-tests) that are conducted via Google+ ‘Hangout on Air’. The testing sessions are automatically captured and communicated with community via the CATAMI YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/user/CATAMIAustralia). The YouTube channel and the CATAMI Project blog http://catami-australia.blogspot.com.au/ have both served as excellent methods for the CATAMI Project Team to regularly communicate with the marine science community, allowing the project to remain current. All of the CATAMI Tools being developed are open source and the latest tools are available from here - http://sandbox.catami.org/. Project CATAMI are keen to receive further feedback from other marine community members and can be contacted via [email protected]. Brisbane | Australia 20–25 Oct | 2013 7th eResearch Australasia Conference ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S) For each author, please include a short bio of 150-200 words. This information can extend onto a third page if needed. The information about the topic should take up no more than two pages. Principal Author: Luke Edwards Luke holds a BSc (Env. Sci.) with first-class honours from UWA. He is currently employed by iVEC and WAMSI (Western Australian Marine Science Institution) as a Marine Data Manager. He previously supported the development of a WA Node of the Australian Ocean Data Network, which aims to accelerate the availability marine data in Western Australia. Previous to this position he worked for WALIS Office at Landgate and in the university sector through the federal BlueNet project with a focus on geographic information systems and data and metadata management. Organisations of other authors: iVEC iVEC is an unincorporated joint venture between CSIRO, Curtin University, Edith Cowan University, Murdoch University and The University of Western Australia and is supported by the Western Australian Government. iVEC encourages and energising in research and the uptake of, supercomputing, large scale data storage and visualisation in Western Australia. This is achieved by making available facilities and expertise to the research, education and industrial communities. Application areas include nanotechnology, radioastronomy, high energy physics, medical and mining training, medical research, mining and petroleum, architecture and construction, multimedia, and urban planning. iVEC has Facilities in each of its partner organisations, as well as having supercomputing infrastructure hosted at three locations: • The Pawsey Centre at the Australian Resources Research Centre (ARRC) in Technology Park, Kensington • Fornax, the supercomputer at the University of Western Australia, • Epic, the supercomputer at Murdoch University. As well as providing access to supercomputing facilities, iVEC holds seminars and symposia on eResearch and supercomputing, and provides support to students and industry personnel, researchers, academics and scientists through training, scholarships and workshops on advanced computing and research and development opportunities. Organisations of other authors: Australian Centre for Field Robotics (ACFR) ACFR is based in the School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering at The University of Sydney, and is dedicated to the research, development, application and dissemination of autonomous as well as intelligent robots / systems for operation outside. The ACFR is one of the largest robotics research institutes in the world and has substantial experimental facilities including three laboratories, a field test site, a range of experimental as well as production vehicles, industry-quality mechanical and electrical design and fabrication facilities. The ACFR also employs the latest in embedded computing, sensing and control technologies. Brisbane | Australia 20–25 Oct | 2013 7th eResearch Australasia Conference .