Terms and abbreviations

This is not an exhaustive list of Wild Me terminology, but it should be enough to get started. For a more complete list, check out the researcher overview.

Term	Meaning
ACM	Asset Curation Module – the management of the assets, as part of the larger WBIA backend.
Annotation	Selected portion of an image where an animal has been found.
Asset	An image, video, or other file uploaded into the wildbook. Also called a MediaAsset.
Attribute	Metadata that can be associated and stored with a sighting, an encounter or an individual. Also called a property or field.
Backend	Aspects of the system that do not interact directly with the user.
Curation	Ongoing act of maintaining the internal consistency of the data; in particular, the state of the identifications associated with images of animals.
Codex	Next gen data management application. Includes React front end, Houston and EDM components.
Ecological	Data about, and relationships between, animals and their environment.
EDM	Ecological Data Module – The database containing any information about ecological observations or derived conclusions.
Encounter	A single animal observed at a place in time. This can be thought of as a sub-component of a Sighting (which can contain more than one animal). This is created when an Annotation is given a date and location.
Frontend	The aspects of the next gen system that interact with the user, in particular the React-based user interface.
Houston	Next gen only. The primary gateway between frontend and backend systems; acts as a traffic cop to coordinate between primarily the EDM and ACM/WBIA. Also maintains critical functionality within, such as user/organization and security functionality; as well as some cacheing and load-balancing, etc. The front end React application sends a request to Houston, which routes it to EDM or WBIA as appropriate.
Individual	A single animal, analogous to one which exists in the wild. Also known as Marked Individual, which references it being identified as unique (versus arbitrary / non-specific animal).
REST API	Representational state transfer - Stateless client / server API between frontend and backend.
Sighting	Is an observation of animals and ecological metadata at a point and time. The duration/scale of "point" and "time" vary by individual species and researcher usage, but should be considered fairly discrete (compare "Survey"). Often sightings are accompanied by photographic (or other) data which is used to document the animals in the sighting. This is (for legacy reasons) referred to as an occurrence in much of the code but this term should be avoided.
Submission	Base level of a data upload from a user. Will be subsequently processed into Assets.
Survey	A survey is record of an effort to find ecological data. It is made up of one or more SurveyTrack (which denotes the geographical path covered), and zero or more Sightings of animals. Notably, there can be zero sightings, meaning an attempt to find animals was made, but none were seen.
WBIA	(Wildbook Image Analysis - formerly IBEIS) The computer vision subsystem. Maintains assets in the ACM, and applies various algorithms to analyse contents of images. Main functionality includes seeking content within an image ("detection") and then determining the individual animal within that content ("identification").
Wildbook	The collective name of the entire software suite. An ACM, EDM, houston, and the UI. May represent a single species, or multiple groups of species.