Animal Finder Interchange Format
From Katrina Help Info
This Animal Finder article is a stub. You can help by joining Animal Finder Project and expanding it (http://katrina.asiaquake.org/wiki/index.php?title=Animal_Finder_Interchange_Format&action=edit).
Work-In-Progress, for review and comment only
Introduction
Animal Finder Interchange Format, called 'AFIF' for short, is a proposed standardized data model for storing and sharing information about missing and stranded animals. It can be implemented in XML (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML) or in a relational database.
The AFIF standard will help in the organization of data about animals affected by disasters such as Hurricane Katrina.
| Table of contents |
Learning About AFIF
Only webmasters and database administrators need to grapple with AFIF.
- To volunteer or view the PeopleFinder search (http://www.katrinalist.net/) the database, no knowledge of AFIF is expected.
- If you are running a site that collects information on pets, or you want to help with the "scraping" effort, you should understand AFIF.
- Visit PetFinderTech for information on implementing AFIF.
- The People Finder Interchange Format home page (http://zesty.ca/pfif/) shows great details of the PeopleFinder database with examples and a FAQ. Our goal is to have a similar source for AFIF.
Versons and Evolution of AFIF
The AFIF is a de facto standard (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defacto) that can and should evolve in due time. Version 0.1 is in development.
Background
AFIF is intended to help with database storage, information sharing and data transmission among various sites. A standard allows for the easy movement of data between sites, shelters and others and greatly eases data management for this project.
Tip: The DISCUSSION link at the top of this page contains additional insights.
Notes
- These notes are 'adapted' from PFIF
KatrinaDataProject has a good spec focused on privacy: http://katrinadataproject.com
AFIF is a data model that can be embedded in XML, a relational database, or in Excel if necessary. What is important are the names and meanings of the fields.
Here some design notes on PFIF from John Galloway which may be applicable to AFIF:
- Designed for data dumping.
- We believe having 50 sites with info is counterproductive to the effort. The people in shelters have limited bandwidth, limited computers, and limited time on the computers. They do not have time to search 50 different sites... This is why we save their search and run it for them as new data comes in. A best-case scenario would be for every small-cap registry site to close down, dump their data to a central loc, and link to the data entry form for this central location. An interoperable data spec simply fosters creating multiple search engines for data, which hampers evacuee access to it. Even if you can get all the data in one place, there is still the chance they won't find your central database search.
- Simple.
- A secretary in the office of a church serving as a shelter for 20 families could type up a list in xls and email it to us. I would not ask her to do this with XML, and I'm certainly not going to ask her to create an RSS feed.
- Good for matching.
- We've included various fields which, from our experience, are very useful in matching (My compnay designed the loyalty network that runs Citibank Thankyou rewards, matching customer actions on demographic/contact data such as this from over 100 different file feeds in 30+ formats.). These were released with our original spec on Friday. We have been developing the data to collect and systems to use to make accurate, confident matches for years. Basically, the founding KDP team does this for a living.
- Gathering data from missing person's reports
- We've also included fields useful in identifying people, and people are happy to give the information. It is not personally identifiable, so there is no privacy concern to posting up age, hair color, eye color, etc AND it helps searchers increase match confidence. Over 80% of people entering data into our website are providing this data.
- There is also the EvacueeandSiteInformationDataDictionary
Animal Finder Directory
- Animal Rescue Resources Wiki in use by the public
- Animal Finder Project Wiki in development
- Animal Finder Assignments ++
- Animal Finder Contributors Pages ++
- Animal Finder Coordination ++ Provides a high-level view of the status and activities for the various projects under the Animal Finder Project umbrella
- Animal Finder Data Entry Tips ++
- Animal Finder Funding Plan ++ A plan to explain the value of this project and pursue funding to build out these tools and services.
- Animal Finder Future Developments
- Animal Finder Future Users Page
- Animal Finder Interchange Format or AFIF
- Animal Finder Mission ++
- Animal Finder Outreach ++ Outreach/marketing and press information about the project
- Animal Finder Outreach Lists ++
- Animal Finder Privacy Statement ++
- Animal Finder Task List ++
- Animal Finder Tech ++ automate data interchange between animal shelter databases
- Animal Finder Tech Structured Data Sets
- Animal Finder Volunteer ++ volunteer effort to input unstructured data by hand
- Animal Finder Volunteer Instructions ++
- Animal Shelter Finder ++ project gathering shelters and shelter contact info
- Animal Shelter Finder Usability Issues ++
- Animal Shelter Local Coordination ++
- Animal Finder Database Project Application in development
- Animal Finder Database ProjectMain Wiki Page
- Animal Finder Database Project Forums
- Technical Forum (http://groups.google.com/group/katrinadev-petfinder)
- General Forum (http://groups.google.com/group/DataTrackers-AF) - for community involvement
- Animal Finder Templates:
Notes:
- ++ Major Revisions from PeopleFinder to AnimalFinder are pending
- Redirect Info (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Redirect)
- Stub categories (http://www.katrinahelp.info/wiki/index.php/Category:Stub_categories)
- Source Katrina PeopleFinder Project
