The Invasive Alien Species in Europe App allows citizens to report the presence of IAS of Union concern on the European territory. Data quality assurance of the observations gathered through the App is a major concern.
The Invasive Alien Species in Europe App allows citizens to report the presence of IAS of Union concern on the European territory. Data quality assurance of the observations gathered through the App is a major concern.
The data validation process includes a moderation step of the observations, at picture level (e.g. original images, quality of the picture, distance to the organism), or at attributes level (e.g. time, geospatial comparison with known occurrences and habitat). Users’ comments on their observations are also duly considered.
Possible outliers, errors or unclear submissions (e.g. identification of species which look very similar in pictures) can be further analysed by the EASIN Editorial Board experts. In addition, sensitive records could be prioritized (e.g. new areas of invasion, or presence of a species near the border of a country where it had not been previously reported). After the validation process, a submission can be accepted as “valid”, and integrated in the EASIN Geodatabase.