July 12 – Wildnote: Harnessing Technology to Support Citizen Scientists

Speaker: Kristen Hazard

Kristen Hazard, Wildnote’s founder and chief programmer will share the Wildnote story and give an app overview, while Renee Punzi and Nancy Douglas will talk about Wildnote’s current citizen sciene efforts on the Central Coast.

In 2011, Kristen Hazard, a principal at Terra Verde Environmental Consulting, built an environmental compliance reporting app for the powerhouse utility PG&E. The utility needed to comply with environmental regulations while building the infrastructure to accept power from the two huge solar projects in the Carrizo Plains. The app was so valuable to PG&E it started using it on all large construction projects. Over the last five years, PG&E has utilized the app to submit over 50,000 reports and upload over 300,000 photos from more than 600 users from 30 companies. PG&E continues to use the application to meet its compliance reporting needs.

With this background, Kristen’s company, Suntoucher Software, recently created and launched a new app called Wildnote directed to the broader environmental community. Wildnote creates efficiencies in the process of collecting, managing, and reporting environmental data. This is a powerful tool that supports those who are directly involved in the hard work of collecting and analyzing environmental data. The better data we have, the better decisions we can make.