EurOCEAN 2000 - Vlaams Instituut voor de Zee

performance of normal PCs and the availability of huge disks (now 50 Gbytes), the use of
normal PCs is really a serious option, although users less familiar with computers might want
to use some remote server with a proper soft- and hardware maintenance. The three scenarios
are:
1) The use of image databases with taxonomic and ecological information that can be
consulted if necessary, without an automatic identification of diatoms. This is the simplest
option that can be realised on normal PCs in which the databases are used as an electronic
atlas that can grow and eventually replace the normal (paper) atlasses.
2) An integrated system that combines the functionality of (1) with an automatic
identification such that the system is given an image of an unknown diatom and it outputs
a sorted list with the best matches from the database. This system can also be developed on
normal PCs and guarantees a 100% availability for the users.
3) Users who don't need a 100% availability but only occasionally need to confirm their
identification or need ecological factors can have access to a server connected to the
Internet as well as a powerful computer or even a supercomputer. The server only is a
front-end to the (super)computer which is required because many users, world-wide, can
submit images and queries. Here there are two options: (a) sending an email with
keywords (Identify Diatom) with an image in a certain format attached, upon which the
server will respond by email, or (b) an interactive web-page with predefined queries and
fields for entering file names and a link GO. Both options can be completely automatic,
i.e. with no operator intervention.
The development of such products and services involves a lot of work, but their success
critically depends on two factors: (a) an identification with a correct hit-rate beyond 95% and
(b) the inclusion of all representative species from the real-world applications in the databases.
In other words: ADIAC has still a long way to go!
REFERENCES
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