Re: An Elephant is Faithful 100%

I can make myself available to collaborate on database
design, tuning, etc.

--elein
elein(at)varlena(dot)com

On Fri, Nov 18, 2005 at 01:15:07PM -0800, Josh Berkus wrote:
> Folks,
>
> I recently received the following appeal from the African Elephant Database.
> They need help migrating to PostGIS and building out their application.
>
> I, personally, cannot imagine a more compelling project which deserves the
> PostgreSQL community's collective help. The elephant is our mascot! Plus
> the AED folks introduced the idea of making this a general OSS project for
> species conservation databases.
>
> Who's available?
>
> ---------------------------
> I'm writing with to explore the possiblity of a collaboration between
> Postgresql, PostGIS and the African Elephant Database (AED) of the IUCN/SSC
> African Elephant Specialist Group (AfESG). Please allow me to begin by
> giving you a little background on all those acronyms, in reverse order.
>
> The AfESG is a group of elephant experts from across the African continent
> who, aside from their daily jobs, disinterestedly lend their skills to
> provide technical advice on elephant conservation and management. The
> mission of the AfESG is to promote the long-term conservation of African
> elephants throughout their range, and the group focuses its efforts on
> capacity building, alleviation of human-elephant conflict, compilation and
> dissemination of technical information, and the development of elephant
> conservation strategies. Led by a volunteer chair, the AfESG has a small
> secretariat in Nairobi, Kenya. Please see http://iucn.org/afesg/ for
> details.
>
> The AfESG is one of the most active of over 120 Specialist Groups of the
> IUCN Species Survival Commission (SSC). The largest conservation grouping in
> the world, the SSC is a worldwide network of over 7,000 volunteer experts
> working to conserve the diversity of species found on Earth. The SSC is
> responsible for the production of the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
> See http://iucn.org/themes/ssc and http://www.redlist.org.
>
> The SSC is the largest of the six commissions of IUCN - The World
> Conservation Union. IUCN is the world's largest and most important
> conservation network. The Union brings together 82 States, 111 government
> agencies, more than 800 non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and some
> 10,000 scientists and experts from 181 countries in a unique worldwide
> partnership. IUCN's mission is to influence, encourage and assist societies
> throughout the world to conserve the integrity and diversity of nature and
> to ensure that any use of natural resources is equitable and ecologically
> sustainable. The World Conservation Union was founded in October 1948
> following an international conference in Fontainebleau, France. IUCN HQ is
> in Gland, Switzerland. See http://iucn.org/.
>
> The African Elephant Database
> The AED is a geographical information (GIS) system used to maintain an
> accurate and up-to-date record on the distribution and abundance of African
> Elephants. The AED is regularly updated, with data on elephant range and
> numbers constantly being solicited from wildlife authorities and experts
> across the continent, and a major report is produced every three years and
> made available in the AfESG website (see http://iucn.org/afesg/aed/)
>
> The AED currently runs in ESRI ArcGIS 9.1., in a personal geodatabase (MS
> Access) format. We obtained ArcInfo through one of ESRI's conservation
> program grants - but soon we were being asked to pay for maintenance charges
> in excess of USD3,000 per annum. Despite these costs, we are considerably
> constrained by the limitations of the set-up - including the MS Access 2Gb
> size limit. If we were to upgrade our configuration to a full geodatabase
> would involve acquiring ESRI's Spatial Database Engine (SDE) plus a
> commercial RDBMS such as Oracle, DB2 or MS SQL server, at a one-off cost of
> several thousand dollars and annual maintenance fees to match.
>
> Such costs are well beyond our reach, we are hoping to build a more
> sustainable solution using open source software. Although opensource GIS has
> not evolved as much or as quickly as opensource relational databases, we do
> have some hopes that a suitable system could be developed to maintain the
> AED. The AED is the most comprehensive species database in existence, and we
> believe there would be value in developing a turnkey solution that can be
> used to maintain monitoring information on other species for which there are
> relatively good data.
>
> We've got the elephant and the database in common. If you think a
> collaboration could be productive and mutually beneficial, please let me
> know so that we can begin to explore the options.
>
> I look forward to hearing from you.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Julian Blanc
> Manager, African Elephant Database
> IUCN/SSC African Elephant Specialist Group
> Email: julian(dot)blanc(at)iucn(dot)org
> Web: http://iucn.org/afesg/
> --------------------------------------------------
>
> --
> Josh Berkus
> Aglio Database Solutions
> San Francisco
>
> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> TIP 2: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
>