RecFIN Mobile Data Collection

Business Situation

RecFIN, the Recreational Fisheries Information Network is a project of the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission. Established in 1992, the Pacific Coast Recreational Fisheries Information Network is designed to integrate state and federal marine recreational fishery sampling efforts into a single database to provide important biological, social, and economic data for Pacific coast recreational fishery biologists, managers and anglers. The creation of a mobile application would be designed and developed with the following program goals:

• Resource efficiency – Optimized to be used for a full day of data collection without the need to recharge the battery.
• Accuracy – Built in data validation scripts to assure the data that is entered is as accurate as possible given the bounds of accepted values and logic.
• Stand-alone app – Not reliant on a wireless internet connection as sampling sites tend to be located in remote areas where service is not available.
• Data Storage and Transfer – Capability to store a day’s worth of interview data for one sampler and a method built in to transfer the data to a PSMFC server on a daily basis. 

Solution

Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission (PSMFC) releases a formal Request for Proposal (RFP) to solicit vendor bids to engineer both the web-based synchronization and mobile application. Vitasys, Inc. proposes building a PhoneGap based mobile application for cross-market deployment.

Results

PSMFC awards contract to build the mobile application and provide support. Vendor currently in the process of finalizing system performance, data collection, synchronization, analytics.

• Mobile application sampling project will successfully digitize the current paper-based workflow.
• Reduced errors on sampling input and survey collection on anglers and related species, location and count.