Fewer data entry errors
Controlled vocabularies and taxon lookups keep entries consistent. Work in progress on outlier detection to catch typos and implausible measurements while the specimen is still in hand.
NAHPU
Natural History Project Utility
Rethinking biodiversity inventories in the digital age, from the field to the museum and beyond.
NAHPU is a cross-platform (mobile and desktop) digital field catalog for natural history collections. Specimens, sites, collecting events, tissue samples, and field photographs live in one project file, and easily share exact same of data among collaborators.
- Works offline
- No network needed in the field
- Cross-platform
- Desktop, tablet, and phone
- Open standards
- Darwin Core and FAIR principles
Background photograph taken on Mt. Bandahara, Indonesia, by Heru Handika.
Why it exists
Inventories are limited by what gets written down
Field notebooks, camera cards, and spreadsheets rarely reconcile cleanly once an expedition ends. NAHPU keeps the record complete and internally consistent from the moment the specimen is in hand.
Media stays with the record
Photographs, audio, and video attach to the specimen, site, event, or narrative they document, so nothing is orphaned in a camera folder with only a timestamp to identify it.
Rich field data, entered once
Localities with unlimited coordinates, collecting effort, preparation details, and habitat condition are written once, then reused by every specimen and event that shares them.
More than a paper catalog
Digital capture reaches beyond paper. Ongoing work on emerging machine learning methods will read a growing catalog in real time, surface distinct morphospace, and guide decisions in the field.
Inside the catalog
Example views
One project seen from the specimen, site, map, media library, statistics, narrative, and export interfaces. The records shown are provided for an illustrative purpose only.
Every specimen field on one screen
Field number, collector, taxon, condition, and preparation stay beside the measurements. Outlier warnings (work in progress) mark values that fall outside the expected range for the taxon before the record is committed.
Catalog formats
Fields that match the discipline
Each format is fine-tuned for its discipline, and a single project can hold more than one format. You can add custom fields to any format, and the app will remember them for the next specimen of that taxon.
Mammalogy
AvailableSkins, skulls, and standard external measurements, etc.
Ornithology
AvailablePlumage, molt, and other bird-specific attributes.
Herpetology
AvailableAmphibian and reptile records with measurement and fixation details.
Entomology
AvailableInsect series, host-plant association, and mounting details.
Ichthyology
In developmentFish records with meristics and fixation details.
Paleontology
In developmentFossil material with stratigraphic and locality context.
From the field
Where every record begins
Behind each catalog number is an animal, a locality, and a night of fieldwork. NAHPU keeps the photographs with the specimen data they belong to. You can also record audio and videos directly in the app, and attach them to the record they document.
Photographs by Heru Handika.
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Capabilities
What comes with the catalog
Digital asset management
Attach photos, audio, and videos of specimens, habitats, and field notes directly to your collection records.
Multi-taxon support
Mix taxa in a single project or separate in multiple projects. Each specimen gets a catalog format tailored to its taxon.
Write a site once, use it everywhere
Create rich site profiles with unlimited coordinates and reuse them across specimens and events.
Collecting events
Document collection date, method, effort, and personnel, then link them to multiple specimens.
Tissue sample management
Track large sample sets with barcode and QR scanning via the device camera.
Real-time statistics
Monitor activity to make decision on collecting strategy, avoid collector bias, and prevent over-collection at a glance.
Advanced sharing
Share data with collaborators or bulk import it into a museum database.
Open source and open standards
Built on open-source stacks, following Darwin Core and FAIR principles.
Not all at once
Or start as a spreadsheet replacement
Moving your collection workflows to a digital catalog does not have to be all or nothing. If you are not ready to convert everything, use NAHPU where the spreadsheet used to sit and keep the associations it gives you for free.
Start where the spreadsheet was
Enter records in NAHPU instead of a sheet and export a tabular file whenever you need one. Everything downstream of the export carries on unchanged.
Associations come with the record
A specimen already points at its site, collecting event, personnel, parts, and photographs. No lookup formulas, no locality text copied between sheets, no coordinate flips, and no row that quietly refers to the wrong site.
One project instead of many sheets
Sites, specimens, tissue samples, and digital asset records stop living in separate files that drift apart between field seasons. They stay associated in the same catalog.
Collaboration
We are the users of our own software
NAHPU is built by the people who carry it into the field. From the humidity, unpredictable weather, and lack of electricity in the mountains of Southeast Asia to the tall Andes and the riverine habitat deep in the Amazon in South America, and the dry climate of the North American desert, we poured this experience into building NAHPU. It is designed for fieldwork of any complexity across humid and cold, to hot and dry climates, and everything in between.
Interdisciplinary by design
Field experience meets software industry practice
Through collaboration with the Human Augmented Analytics Group, we brought software industry experience to NAHPU, and develop it into interdisciplinary research and training project with real-world application.
Take it to the field
NAHPU is free to install and free to use. Start with the installation guide, or follow the walkthrough that builds a project from the first site to the first exported record set.
Funding and support
Who makes this possible
NAHPU is free and open source, developed with the support of public research funding, a dedicated mammalogy fund, and institutional collaboration.
Federal research grant
National Science Foundation
Funding for this project was provided under two awards.
Endowed fund
Alfred L. Gardner and Mark S. Hafner Mammalogy Fund
Additional funding for this project.
Logistical support
Human-Augmented Analytics Group
Provided logistical support for collaboration and development at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Various other funding sources may have supported this project through the work of the contributors.
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funders.