The Project
ElephantDatabase.org is the online home of the African and Asian Elephant Database, a joint project of the IUCN African Elephant Specialist Group (AfESG) and Asian Elephant Specialist Group (AsESG). It contains the most comprehensive data on elephant population and range worldwide.
Using the reporting tools, specialists are able to report detailed elephant population data for a variety of survey types, including aerial total and sample counts, ground total and sample counts, faecal DNA, and dung counts. Data is reviewed by the Specialist Groups, and will be used in the creation of African Elephant Status Reports.
The site presents data from past African Elephant Status Reports, as well as the latest survey data reported to either specialist group. Data on this web site is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike license.
The Work
ElephantDatabase.org is a true cloud application that brings together many different cloud-based services into one knowledge product. The app itself, written in Ruby on Rails 3, runs and scales on Heroku. The database is PostGIS and PostgreSQL hosted on Amazon EC2. Large files are stored in Amazon S3. Web map visualizations are provided by Google Fusion Tables. Email and collaboration services are provided by Google Apps.
The Partners
Diane Skinner, Julian Blanc, Rob Heittman, Alison Heittman, IUCN African Elephant Specialist Group, IUCN Asian Elephant Specialist Group, Solertium