Case Study: University of Reading launches FruitWatch.org to track climate change impacts with Oracle Cloud

University of Reading launches Fruitwatch.org with Oracle Cloud

The University of Reading needed a fast, secure way to build FruitWatch.org, a browser-based tool that would let UK citizen scientists report when fruit trees were flowering to help researchers study the effects of climate change. Using Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, Oracle Autonomous Database, and Oracle APEX, the team created a site that could handle thousands of image-based reports without collecting personal data.

Oracle helped the University of Reading launch the application in just a few days, with Oracle for Research providing cloud credits and hands-on support. The result was FruitWatch.org, which has collected more than 6,000 reports from every county in the UK and is already revealing patterns such as earlier blooming in the south than in the north.

University of Reading