Learning from Scotland: The ShoreUpdate App

Through our personal connections and professional collaborations, FPAN staff first gained significant experience with the use of citizen-science apps in archaeology in Scotland. The Scotland Coastal Archaeology and the Problem of Erosion (SCAPE) initiative created the Scotland Coastal Heritage and Response Project and willingly shared details of their ShoreUpdate App (SCHARP; Dawson et al. Reference Dawson, Hambly, Kelley, Lees and Miller2020; https://scapetrust.org/). The ShoreUpdate App has been quite successful in engaging community volunteers in digitally documenting archaeological sites at risk from climate change. One of its important functions is to record the geographical points for each archaeological site, together with an assessment form, which can be continuously edited and updated. This allows members of the public to help update status information for each site (Figure 1).

Figure 1.

SCAPE's Scottish Coastal Heritage at Risk Project map available to the public and volunteers (image from the SCAPE Trust website, https://scapetrust.org/sites-at-risk/).

Among those who monitor archaeological sites in the United States, there has been an interest in trying to develop apps that can be used locally by state, tribal, and federal agencies. In the United States there are fewer examples of apps used by site stewardship programs (Table 1). Some examples from local contexts include the CitPres App for Bodie, California (Lercari and Jaffke Reference Lercari and Jaffke2020) and the South Park Site Stewards program in Colorado (Miller, Rubinson, et al. Reference Miller, Rubinson, Padon, Zabecki, Raschkow and Lowe2022). Statewide, the Utah Cultural Site Stewardship Program (2022) currently uses the Survey 123 App to collect site visit information (Miller, Rubinson, et al. Reference Miller, Rubinson, Padon, Zabecki, Raschkow and Lowe2022). Apps under development include the Nevada Site Stewardship Program (Samantha Rubinson, personal communication 2024) and the Maine Midden Minders (Newsom et al. Reference Newsom, Scott, Kelley and Allen2023).

However, none of these apps fit the needs of site stewardship programs created specifically to engage the public in tracking changes to sites over time exacerbated by climate change. In contrast, the open-source code and model of the ShoreUpdate App do provide an excellent model to emulate. As the director at the Florida Public Archaeology Network (FPAN), I was inspired to start the Heritage Monitoring Scouts (HMS Florida) program in 2016 by what I observed at SCAPE and SCHARP (Miller and Murray Reference Miller and Murray2018). As part of this effort, FPAN hoped to develop a ShoreUpdate-like app for surveying statewide archaeological sites (Miller Reference Miller, Orser, Funari, Lawrence, Symonds and Zarankin2020; Miller, Ayers-Rigsby, et al. Reference Miller, Ayers-Rigsby, LeFebvre, Walker, Murray and Kangas2024; Miller, Murray, et al. Reference Miller, Murray, Kemp, Lee, Simmons-Jenkins, Cochran and Gaillard2024; Rubinson and Miller Reference Rubinson, Miller, Reetz and Sperling2024).

Directly adapting the ShoreUpdate App to the US context, however, did not prove easy. First, in the United States, archaeologists are bound by state and federal laws that protect site location information from being shared publicly. Thus, the georeferenced, end-user friendly public view of the site location points displayed on the ShoreUpdate App for Scotland could not be replicated in the United States (Figure 1). Second, unlike in the United Kingdom, no national database of archaeological sites exists in the United States: data are managed differently state by state and among various federal and tribal land-managing units (Bollwerk et al. Reference Bollwerk, Gupta and Smith2024; Kansa et al. Reference Kansa, Kansa, Anderson, Wells, Meyers, Yerka and Hess2021)—although in recent years there have been increasing calls for the development of such a national database (Anderson et al. Reference Anderson, Bissett, Yerka, Wells, Kansa, Kansa, Myers, Carl DeMuth and White2017; Kansa et al. Reference Kansa, Kansa, Wells, Yerka, Myers, DeMuth, Bissett and Anderson2018; Ortman and Altschul Reference Ortman and Altschul2023). Finally, Apple and Android apps need constant updating, but FPAN was not able to budget for making a custom app that would be sustainable into the future.

Even in Scotland, the use of apps for archaeology has changed over time, given the shifting needs of the SCAPE organization. It therefore recently built a second app, the SCAPE App, that differs from the ShoreUpdate App in several ways. First, the SCAPE App is not heavily promoted to the public because it is intended for use only by a few qualified individuals; in contrast, the ShoreUpdate App encouraged as many community volunteers to participate as possible. However, the SCAPE team found that further training would be required to maintain quick response and quality control (QRQC). Second, the focus of data collection in the SCAPE App moved from recording condition assessments for thousands of sites to recording linear geographic data of the erosional edges along the shorelines of key threatened sites.

Developing a Workflow for Florida: The Heritage Monitoring Scouts (HMS) Program

Given the limitations of directly adapting the ShoreUpdate App to use in Florida, FPAN sought new ways to build infrastructure to engage the public in monitoring at-risk sites. In a first attempt at a program called Heritage Monitoring Scouts (HMS Florida; Miller and Murray Reference Miller and Murray2018), FPAN used simple digital tools to reach out to all residents of and visitors to Florida, similar to what the SCHARP project did. The original site monitoring form, approved by the Florida Bureau of Archaeological Research, asked the observer to rate archaeological sites into good, fair, and poor categories during a condition assessment. The form also included useful fields replicated from the ShoreUpdate app, as well as other site stewardship programs in the United Kingdom and the United States. When the program launched in 2016, the system was built by combining basic Google docs and spreadsheets to include a “Scout Report” (condition assessment) with a sign-in: this information comprised the HMS Florida database. QRQC was relatively easy to track initially but became quite complicated as the scale grew larger, with multiple scouts recording multiple sites and some sites recorded repeatedly by the same or different participants.

Similar to SCAPE's SCHARP project, FPAN's HMS Florida program has also evolved from a condition assessment tool to collecting other critical data documenting changes to sites over time, particularly shorelines (Miller and Murray Reference Miller and Murray2018). While working with SCAPE in Scotland on the Learning from Loss project in 2018, I learned to use an Arrow global navigation satellite system (GNSS) receiver to collect shoreline data. I brought this methodology to FPAN as a template to use in HMS Florida protocols. Scotland's SCAPE App integrates these functions, but again the limitations on data sharing and the cost of app development prevented HMS Florida from being able to directly adopt that app to the US context. FPAN instead moved forward with developing an HMS Florida database using the open source Arches platform from the Getty Conservation Institute and World Monuments Fund (https://archesproject.org; Dalgity et al. Reference Dalgity, Myers and Patterson2022; Myers et al. Reference Myers, Dalgity, Avramides, Wuthrich, Ionnides, Fritsch, Leissner, Davies, Remondino and Caffo2012). Arches allows for restrictions on data entry and use that limit access to the public and volunteers (Figure 2).

Figure 2.

Heat map of archaeological sites in Florida in HMS Florida Arches Database (image from the HMS Florida Arches Database, https://hms.fpan.us/).

Filling in the Gaps: Supplemental Apps for Florida

FPAN also needed ways to collect other types of data with the help of community volunteers, in addition to that collected in our adaptation of the Arches database. To provide additional functionality, FPAN explored using a variety of different apps, including the Solocator App for placing metadata into photographs, the ArcGIS Field Maps App for collecting spatial data, and the Arrow GNSS equipment with its EOS Tools Pro App for measuring locational information. These are all out-of-the-box commercial apps that were built for other purposes but can be adapted by archaeologists.

The Solocator App overlays a top banner and other information onto a user's photographs that contain GNSS coordinates of the photo's location, including elevation and a timestamp, and even records the direction the user was facing when taking the picture (Figure 3; https://solocator.com/). This functionality helps overcome the challenge of managing photographs taken during a community-driven monitoring project. An industrial pack upgrade for this app, costing only 99 cents, allows the user to add custom text in two fields at the bottom. For HMS Florida, FPAN staff use the first field to record a site number or project name. The second field is generally used to indicate whether the photograph is of a feature or an artifact or otherwise describes the content. Solocator thus obviated the need for training scouts to produce and maintain complex photo logs. Users can simply upload their Solocator-enhanced photographs directly into the HMS Florida Arches database and site forms. FPAN also uses Solocator in its Cemetery Resource Protection Training (CRPT) program and for site checks requested by the state or other heritage partners.

Figure 3.

The Solocator App can add metadata about a photograph, such as position and directional information, directly into the photograph (image from the Solocator website, https://solocator.com/).

HMS Florida also makes use of the ArcGIS Field Maps App to collect spatial data, especially information about shifting shorelines (https://www.esri.com/en-us/arcgis/products/arcgis-field-maps/overview). As with any geographic information system (GIS) software, Field Maps allows for the collection of point and linear data that are often associated with photographs and other attached data. FPAN found it to be relatively easy to train volunteers to help map shorelines and individual artifacts in this app while scouting for erosional edges. When engaging the public, however, archaeologists need to be mindful of varying definitions for shorelines or for at-risk heritage in general (Cochran et al. Reference Cochran, Miller, Wholey, Gougeon, Gaillard, Murray and Parker2023; Gaillard et al. Reference Gaillard, Luciano, Sundin, Weber and Smith2024; Kangas et al. Reference Kangas, LeFebvre, Green, Ayers-Rigsby, Bear, De La Torre Salas and Karim2024). FPAN trains land managers, project teams, and volunteers to identify the erosional edge and use consistent terminology when recording linear observations. Archaeologists engaged in this work need to track dynamic shorelines that shift, collapse, or create benches halfway down a bluff. Another reason we use ArcGIS Field Maps is to reconcile locational data. Often, FPAN staff find during site checks that previously recorded sites and cemeteries are incorrectly placed on the map. Reconciliation occurs when the field supervisor and the database manager compare recorded site boundaries and adjust for new, more accurate data from the field.

For HMS Florida, FPAN uses an Arrow Gold GNSS receiver to capture precise locational information into the mobile GIS (https://eos-gnss.com/). Such affordable GNSS hardware has recently become crucial for fieldwork in archaeology and heritage at risk (Cobb et al. Reference Cobb, Earley-Spadoni and Dames2019). FPAN staff use the EOS Tools Pro App to configure and run the Arrow Gold, an app built by the device's manufacturer. When dealing with shifting shorelines across broad landscapes, archaeologists must find ways to describe a dynamic environment with fixed points. The Dynamic Coasts projects (Muir et al. Reference Muir, Richardson-Foulger, Hurst and Rennie2022) serve as an example of how the Arrow Gold GNSS data could fit into the needs of an interdisciplinary team working in Scotland.

All practitioners run into some challenges with using GNSS receivers in the field. When used alone, the satellite data may provide accuracies around or less than a meter, but differential GNSS (dGNSS) would be required for centimeter-level accuracy. In Florida, researchers have access to free dGNSS positional corrections from a Real-Time Kinetic (RTK) network through a Florida Department of Transportation account. Elsewhere, however, subscribing to such a service can be expensive, and it may not function well across state or national boundaries. Then there are the problems posed by trees and other types of terrestrial cover, as well as interference to the satellite signals, which have to be carefully accommodated, often requiring multiple recording attempts and careful cross-checking of the results.

New Apps on the Horizon

At FPAN, staff are continually keeping an eye out for new potential apps to use in our community collaboration efforts. The Heritage at Risk Committee of the Society for Historical Archaeology (SHA) and the Climate Change Strategies and Response Committee of the Society for American Archaeology often sponsor sessions to pilot such new apps. For example, at the SHA conference in Lisbon in 2023, Bonnie Newsom and colleagues (Reference Newsom, Scott, Kelley and Allen2023) shared a prototype for a new app developed for the Maine Midden Minders program (https://umaine.edu/middenminders/). Their iOS app, developed using the Swift programming framework, relies on Apple's ARKit and RealityKit libraries to integrate useful augmented reality (AR) enabled workflows (Liang Reference Liang2021). With its use of lidar scanning, plane detection, and raycasting, field testing of this custom app at Acadia National Park in Frazer Point Winter Harbor, Maine, has proved promising.

As mentioned earlier, FPAN uses the Arches open-source software to host the HMS Florida database. Recently, FPAN staff tested the Arches Collector app, which can download offline information before fieldwork is conducted and allows users to directly collect new data in the field using a smartphone; this information is later uploaded to the central database. Our pilot projects with this app have thus far uncovered some challenges due to our customization of the backend database setup in the Arches software. When future updates make the Arches Collector App easier to deploy for archaeological monitoring, FPAN staff anticipate it will be a good fit for statewide site stewardship programs (Miller, Rubinson, et al. Reference Miller, Rubinson, Padon, Zabecki, Raschkow and Lowe2022).