SIZEUP: A TOOL FOR INTERACTIVE COMPARATIVE COLLECTION ANALYSIS FOR VERY LARGE SPECIES COLLECTIONS

Abstract

The research breadth and depth of biological collections varies widely among museums and herbaria. As of this writing, there is no method to perform large scale visualization, and comparison amongst biological collections from numerous museums. In this study we seek to create an interactive environment, suitably intuitive, easy to use, and fast, that will enable large data sets from multiple collections to be efficiently rated and ranked according to standard criteria of relevance to a scientist and her particular research requirements. We use a quadtree in conjunction with two novel methods developed for this research project: (i) `branch bypassing', and (ii) a unique geospatial spread calculation. Taken together, these methods allow us to create a value measure to determine the strengths and weaknesses of a biological collection based on any number of criteria. We found our methods effectively provided a fast and efficient way to calculate geospatial spread, while concurrently working with large clustered biological data sets. Our framework also provided a first-of-its-kind value measure based upon three standard criteria in order to rank biological collections specimen holdings. The results of our application will lead to a richer description of collection holdings of interest to researchers in biological sciences, resource planning, development, and collaboration.