Opportunity Title:

Development of an Innovative Mobile App for Assessing Honey Bee Colony Health by Citizen Scientists

Research Area:

Safer Chemicals

EPA Lab/Center/Office:

National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory

Location:

Research Triangle Park, NC

Duration:

12 months

Brief Summary:

Protecting honey bee health is a recognized national priority.  This innovative project involves the creation of a mobile app for citizen scientists to monitor the health status of their honey bee colonies. 

Opportunity Description:

Subject: Honey bee health is at risk from factors including parasites, disease, poor nutrition, stress and environmental contamination. While honey bee numbers have declined significantly, the demand for insect pollinated crops has been steadily increasing with no end in sight.  The USDA reported that 42% of honey bee hives in the United States failed in 2014.  Highly important, 2014 was also the first year that summer losses of honey bees exceeded winter losses. These startling findings underscore the importance of identifying biomarkers for gauging honey bee colony health. Our goal is to develop a network of citizen scientists directly engaged in better understanding the impacts of environmental stressors (e.g., pests/pathogens & pesticides) on honey bees. 

Scope – Develop a mobile application to allow participating citizen scientists to input data about the health of their honey bee hive in real time and to track the submission of samples collected from the monitored hive.  Each participant will register via the mobile application to complete a background survey and provide limited location data.  Using the mobile app, beekeepers will report the health status of their hive and submit corresponding samples.  Tabular and graphic data reports will be created using EPA’s Geoplatform and Open Source data visualization tools (such as High Charts and D3).  Other reports would similarly track any biomarkers detected in the honey samples. Participants will be able to view their own hive reports as well as reports that reflect how healthy their hives are relative to county/state/regional/national averages.

Goals – The overall goals of the project are to 1) develop the mobile application code for the project, 2) lead the entire application lifecycle (i.e. concept, design, build, deploy, test, release to app stores and support), 3) build prototypes at the tech scoping stage of project, 4) work alongside web developers to create and maintain a robust framework to support the mobile app being built, 5) work with front end developers to build the interface with a focus on usability features, 6)  create compelling device specific user interfaces and experiences and 7) build web application components including a mapping/data visualization application.

Opportunities for Professional Development:

The intern will gain experience as part of the project team and will have the opportunity to work closely with an interagency (EPA and USDA) and cross-disciplinary team to design and build an end-user application for data collection using a mobile device and an interface to generate data reports.  In addition to developing the acuity necessary to develop a complex platform for data collection, storage and retrieval, the intern will establish a valuable network of professional partners, learn to combine multiple disciplines to accomplish a task and acquire the skills necessary to communicate with diverse audiences. 

Point of Contact or Mentor:

Lehmann.david@epa.gov