Hi there,
I am working with collaborators at the British Trust for Ornithology to develop an app that would allow teams of users to compare their aggregate movement with that of cuckoos wearing GPS tracking devices. The idea is to allow teams to virtually race real wild animals that are on their annual migration from Africa to Europe. We hope this will raise awareness about how amazing the migrating birds are and help to encourage their conservation as their populations are declining.
For this to work we are hoping to use the Strava API to collate the total distances covered (on bike rides, runs etc.) in the relevant time period for members of each team. These would only be shown in the aggregate (i.e. all the team members cumulative movement) rather than with any individual data being displayed or shared with other users. We only need total distance and the date of the activity, not anything to do with the spatial location of the human athletes, segments, etc.
The virtual position of the human teams would be plotted along a straight line from the starting point in west Africa to the end point in the UK. This will be overlaid with the real life up to date locations of the individual cuckoos as they make their migration back to Europe. The result would be a dynamic map showing the challenge unfolding.
We have read the API rules carefully but aren’t quite sure whether using aggregate data in this way would be allowed. We would be very happy to explore some kind of partnership with Strava if that would help as we think this is an exciting concept that is very well aligned with the values of the company.
We would be very grateful for any advice on this question, whether from a member of the Strava team or another experienced developer who would know the answer!
With many thanks,
Chris Sandbrook - University of Cambridge