Case Study: University of Amsterdam advances bird-behaviour research with SURF's Virtual Lab

From binoculars to visualised big data

The University of Amsterdam (UvA) faced a challenge in its ecological research, as traditional observation with binoculars provided only limited data on bird behavior. To modernize their studies, Professor Willem Bouten's group needed an infrastructure to handle the immense data generated by their GPS bird trackers. They partnered with SURF to develop a user-friendly solution.

SURF collaborated with the university to design and implement the Virtual Lab, a solution utilizing SURF's Visualization and HPC Cloud services. This infrastructure stores, analyzes, and visualizes extensive data on over 2,000 birds, including flight path animations. The result is a transformative research tool that provides 24/7 monitoring, reveals individual behavioral differences within species, and has become a resource for a global research community, fundamentally evolving traditional ecology into e-Ecology.

University of Amsterdam

Willem Bouten

Professor of Computational Geo-Ecology