Summary

The Galápagos National Park is home to a highly biodiversified flora and fauna and some of the most exotic animals and plants in the world. As part of its efforts to utilize information and communications technology (ICT) to help it better manage its environment and activities, the Park has developed several software applications that are run over a network connecting the main islands. This project, which is part of the Galápagos Environmental Management Programme, utilizes Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) and FOSS development tools to develop the applications. FOSS was chosen because the tools and development environment associated with it are versatile, easy to use and maintain and they are available for use without licensing fees.

The developed applications increased greatly the ability of the Park to collect, store and retrieve useful, timely and accurate data and information on the key activities of the Park as well as provide useful information towards the management of land resources. One key innovative feature of the applications is the ability for park wardens to visualize global positioning system (GPS) points on a map of the Archipelago where suspicious fishery activities or illegal tourism visits have taken place. This project has been completed and the FOSS applications and databases are in use throughout the year on a twenty-four hour basis. They have proven to be very stable as there have not been any maintenance or updates required since the first application was launched two years ago.

Background of Organization

The Galápagos National Park is in charge of the protection and conservation of the Galápagos Islands, an archipelago made up of 13 main volcanic islands and many more smaller ones. The Galápagos Islands are a part of the territory of the Republic of Ecuador and they are located in the Pacific Ocean on the Equator, approximately 960 kilometres from continental Ecuador.

The Galápagos National Park has its main office on the island of Santa Cruz and three branches on the islands of Isabela, San Cristobal and Floreana. About 250 people work for the Park, with approximately 60 percent of the work being carried out in the protected area outdoors. The National Park consists of most of the islands’ land mass (8,000 sq. km) as well as the surrounding Marine Reserve which covers an area of 45.000 sq. km. The Galápagos National Park is home to one of the most diverse and unusual flora and fauna in the world.

Objectives of Project

This project is part of the Galápagos Environmental Management Programme of the Ecuador government executed through the Ministry of Environment and funded by the Inter-American Development Bank (Project 1274 OC/EC). The principal objective of this programme is to stop and reverse the environmental degradation process within the Galápagos Islands. The programme uses ICT as a tool to facilitate processes and support decisions about environmental management. Under the project, the Park is provided with software applications that are used as tools for the implementation of a fishery registry within the Park, as well as the development of software applications to complement and support environmental management activities within the Park.

The primary target groups of the project are the members of the different units of the Park who are involved with managing the marine resources, tourism activities, legal issues, terrestrial areas protection and monitoring of animals (giant tortoises, land iguanas, and birds).

The other beneficiaries of the project are Instituto Nacional Galápagos, the Chamber of Tourism of Galápagos and the Artisan Fisherman Associations.

FOSS Application

Description

Software developed for the Park made use of the following FOSS development tools and applications: Apache web server, PHP scripting language, FPDF (a PHP class library, which generates Portable Document Format (PDF) files with pure PHP), JGraph (a PHP class library to create graphs) and MySQL database.

The applications developed using these FOSS tools are used to solve the problems of excessive centralization and delays in the gathering and transmitting of data to the main office from the islands and the generation of reports for the Park. A wide area network (WAN) connects the main offices in Puerto Ayora - Santa Cruz Island, and other islands: Isabela, San Cristobal, and Floreana. The applications are accessible using a web browser.

Choice of FOSS

The principal reasons for implementing a solution based on FOSS development tools and applications are:

• Lower initial cost - there was no initial investment on software tools such as PHP, MySQL and the special class libraries were available for free from the Internet.
• Vendor independence - no specific vendors are required.
• Information available on the Internet - a high volume of technical information about FOSS applications is available through websites, forums and communities.
• Security - the network administrator can set up security parameters on PHP applications, Apache and MySQL according to the in-house policies.

In summary, the IT Unit of the Park selected the FOSS applications as they are versatile, available for use without licensing fees, easy to use and to maintain.

Development and Implementation

The applications were built based on a three-layer model:

• Presentation layer - Cascade Style Sheet, JavaScript, PHP layout for generating forms on-the-fly.
• Business layer - classes and objects for dispatching users requests.
• Data layer - classes for connecting to the backend MySQL database.

The development environment was set up quickly. The principal resources invested were time and knowledge. The use of PHP provided quick and easy implementation and the first prototype of the application was presented to the users two months after the project started.

Deployment

Five software applications and a database for monitoring were built. They are used on a daily basis by the members of the different units of the Park over the WAN that connects the main offices in Santa Cruz Island to the islands of Isabela, San Cristobal, and Floreana. The applications built were:

• the Galápagos Marine Reserve management system
• the Tourism Management system
• application for managing extraction of natural resources
• legal process database
• application for Giant Tortoise Breeding Centres
• monitoring database for visitor’s sites (this is a module of the Tourism Management system that evaluates the status of the sites based on indicators)

As a result of the common interface used for all applications, users from a unit were able to utilize applications from another unit without trouble as everything was very familiar to them.

Impact

With this project, useful, timely and accurate data and information on the key activities of fisheries, tourism, and the management of land resources can be collected and made available to the relevant people. The applications provide support for planning tasks and surveillance within the Galápagos Archipelago.
External users from other institutions/bodies have also benefited from the information offered by these applications.

The project has resulted in the judicious and efficient use of ICT resources. Although it has been two years since the launch of the first application, there has not been any expenditure needed for maintenance and updates.

Lessons Learned

The key lessons learned from this project have been:

• analyse ICT technologies according to users and institutional needs, not according to the technical desires of the developers
• avoid looking at the latest and most expensive technology
• keep things simple and functional for the software design and programming
• define clear and reasonable objectives
• always ask the users for feedback and treat them as co-developers
• re-use software modules and components as much as possible

Current Status of Project

The project is considered complete with the deployment of the five software applications and the monitoring database.

Benefits and Challenges

The applications developed brought a 180-degree change within the operation of the Galápagos National Park. The usage of databases for the acquisition and storage of data is one of the most important achievements as it allows data to be stored and accessed efficiently and easily. The time devoted to gather data and prepare reports has been significantly reduced and requests can be satisfied in situ. The applications can be accessed by properly authorized personnel any time of the day and throughout the year.

The Galápagos Marine Reserve management system contains an innovative feature that allows park wardens to visualize GPS points. With this feature they are able to mark points and visualize them on a map of the Archipelago where either suspicious fishery activities or illegal tourism visits have taken place

The main advantages of using FOSS are low costs and vendor independence while the main disadvantage is that few libraries are available for usage within PHP for working with graphics and PDF formatted documents.

The biggest challenge encountered in the project was the conversion of users' expectations (from management to operative levels) into a functional software application.

Other Information

Other projects and activities related to the Galápagos Islands make use of FOSS. These include the Charles Darwin Foundation (an organization dedicated to doing research for Galápagos conservation) and the project that is also a part of the Galápagos Environmental Management Programme – the Tourism Diving Research Project within the Marine Reserve of Galápagos.

Conclusion

The Galápagos National Park has successfully utilized FOSS to develop applications to help in the management of the environment of the Archipelago. These FOSS-based applications have resulted in the ability of the Park to collect data and manage information with regard to the activities of fisheries, tourism and the management of land resources and this will provide support for planning tasks and surveillance within the Galápagos Archipelago. The operation of the Galápagos National Park has benefited greatly from the deployment of ICT in general and the FOSS applications in particular.

The usage of FOSS to develop the applications have resulted in low development costs and encouraged vendor independence. The five applications developed as well as the FOSS database are in use on a daily basis throughout the year bearing testimony to the robustness of FOSS.

Contact Information

Project: Paola Tatiana Guanangui
Organization: Galápagos National Park
Street Address: Oficina Isla Santa Cruz, Puerto Ayora, Charles Darwin Av., Galápagos, Ecuador
Postal Address: Charles Darwin Av. Postal Box: 17-21-1154, Galápagos, Ecuador
Email: patyp@spng.org.ec, pguanangui@yahoo.com
Phone: +593 5 252 6189 / 252 5511
Fax: +593 5 252 6190

Website

The Galápagos National Park
http://www.galapagospark.org