Birds of a feather flock together, yes. But is it safe for them to flock around a wind farm? That’s the challenge Dudek faced. A company of 300 environmental and engineering professionals, Dudek helps implement monitoring programs that ensure clients are caring for the land that has been set aside for the benefit of wildlife.
In 2011, they began evaluating whether or not a site in the desert would be suitable for a wind farm. To ensure no harm came to the local bird population, biologists were brought in to observe the bird activity. Can you imagine recording every single bird that was observed over the span of a year? Not just the species of bird, but the direction and height they were flying, their behaviors, and so forth? With over six thousand bird observations, each of which included five to ten attributes, it was a daunting task. And what did they find? That there was an overwhelming amount of data.
“We were using pen and paper for a while. From experience, and from anybody who’s worked with that type of data, you know that there’s going to be a ton of issues with correctly entering the data, data quality, data interpretation,” explained project manager, Kamarul Muri. The process of getting the data into a spreadsheet or database that could then be analyzed was tedious. He continued, “With the incorporation of iForm as a solution for the work we do, it’s really eliminated a lot of those problems that we had with collecting data.”
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