Paul Roe

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at Queensland University of Technology

Conservation and sustainable management efforts in tropical forests often lack reliable, effective, and easily-communicated ways to measure the biodiversity status of a protected or managed landscape. The sounds that many tropical species make can be recorded by pre-programmed devices and analysed to yield measures of biodiversity. Interpreting the...

Ecoacoustics draws together computer scientists and ecologists to achieve an understanding of ecosystems and wildlife using acoustic recordings of the environment. Computer scientists are challenged to manage increasingly large datasets while developing analytic and visualisation tools. Ecologists struggle to find and use tools that answer highly h...

Cost-effective surveys of low density koala populations are challenging, but technological developments in the acoustics field offer great potential for landscape-scale surveys and monitoring. We assessed passive acoustic recording coupled with automated call identification as a survey method for koalas Phascolarctos cinereus. Surveys targeted area...

Acoustic sensors offer a promising new tool to detect furtive animals; however, sifting through years of audio data is fraught with challenges. Developing automatic detection software still requires a large dataset of calls that have been accurately annotated by experts. Few studies have explored how people identify species by vocalisations in the...

Audio recordings are playing an ever more important role in environmental conservation, however as many of these recordings can be thousands of hours long it becomes impossible for a human to listen to them. There already exist several methods of visualising this long-duration data, and each of these methods has advantages and disadvantages that ma...

Retention forestry aims to mitigate impacts of native forestry on biodiversity, but data are limited on its effectiveness for threatened species. We used acoustics to investigate the resilience of a folivorous marsupial, the koala Phascolarctos cinereus, to timber harvesting where a key mitigation practice is landscape exclusion of harvesting. We d...

The candidate models fitted for detection probability and for probability of koala occupancy using acoustic recorders to detect koala bellows. (DOCX)

Site attributes for eight different forest disturbance treatments. Treatments were classified by harvest intensity and time since harvest. (DOCX)

Tree species recorded in a 50 m radius around each acoustic recorder (n = 171 sites) in north-east NSW and their percentage occurrence at sites classified by conditional occupancy values of koalas. (DOCX)

This paper presents an active learning (AL) framework for the classification of 1‐min audio recordings derived from long‐duration recordings of the environment. The goal of the framework was to investigate the efficacy of AL on reducing the manual annotation effort required to label a large volume of acoustic data according to its dominant sound so...

We offer a vision of digitising culture as supporting cultural processes in the digital era, with a particular focus on participatory design approaches. In doing so, we draw on our own experiences of designing a cross-cultural digital community noticeboard with a very remote Australian Aboriginal community. We review several existing local and inte...

Long-duration recordings of the natural environment have many advantages in passive monitoring of animal diversity. Technological advances now enable the collection of far more audio than can be listened to, necessitating the development of scalable approaches for distinguishing signal from noise. Computational methods, using automated species reco...

Design research is generative, intuitive, experiential, and tactical. Documenting the design research process helps to communicate these decisions, judgements, and values that are embodied in design products. Yet, practices for documenting design research are underreported in the CHI community, particularly for immersive design research field studi...

Over the past decade, frog biodiversity has rapidly declined due to many problems including habitat loss and degradation, introduced invasive species, and environmental pollution. Frogs are greatly important to improve the global ecosystem and it is ever more necessary to monitor frog biodiversity. One way to monitor frog biodiversity is to record...

Audio recordings of the environment are an increasingly important technique to monitor biodiversity and ecosystem function. While the acquisition of long-duration recordings is becoming easier and cheaper, the analysis and interpretation of that audio remains a significant research area. The issue addressed in this paper is the automated reduction...

Site information. Site photographs and a list of bird species found at each site. (PDF)

Cluster statistics. Complete sets of the temporal distribution plots, radar plots, polar histograms for each of the 60 clusters. (PDF)

Sample minutes. Links to the 1200 minutes used to help determine the cluster contents. (PDF)

There have been various studies using automated recognisers of acoustic features and machine learning algorithms to classify frog species within a chorusing community. Such studies rarely consider within-species call variation in the classification process. Individual frog species may make a range of different calls, with different purposes. Includ...

Many ecologists are using acoustic monitoring to study animals and the health of ecosystems. Technological advances mean acoustic recording of nature can now be done at a relatively low cost, with minimal disturbance, and over long periods of time. Vast amounts of data are gathered yielding environmental soundscapes which requires new forms of visu...

Staying connected is vital to maintaining good relationships, yet feelings of disconnection or isolation distance, time differences, or simply busy lives. Everyday interactions, family rituals and habits are often lost, in spite of the pervasiveness of smart-phones and personal multi-purpose devices. This project explores novel ways of connecting p...

Many projects seek to engage urban dwellers to learn about local birds. However, many of these projects require some background knowledge that can be difficult to obtain independently. Our project explores how to make engaging with and learning about local birds easier. To do this, we designed and developed BirdSound, a device that engages people t...

This full-day workshop will explore how human computer interaction (HCI) design approaches can expand, diversify, and improve ways that members of the public engage with nature and science to help save species as citizen scientists. Prospective participants are to submit proposals discussing either a new project, enhancements to an existing project...

Over the past decade, dramatic declines in frog populations have been noticed worldwide. To examine this decline, monitoring frogs is becoming increasingly important. Compared to traditional field survey methods, recent advances in acoustic sensor technology have greatly extended spatial and temporal scales for monitoring animal populations. In thi...

Remote communities all over the world often face the problem of creating and sharing digital contents in ways that are appropriate for their values and customs while using tools that were designed for Western contexts. This paper advocates for a different approach that builds upon the own goals and ambitions of a specific community, leveraging exis...

This paper considers computer-assisted learning of sound spectra in environmental recordings to facilitate manual bird species identification. Today, a variety of automated methods have been successfully applied for acoustic recognition of specific bird species. These methods are more effective for single targeted species detection. For in-field re...

Species distribution models have great potential to efficiently guide management for threatened species, especially for those that are rare or cryptic. We used MaxEnt to develop a regional-scale model for the koala Phascolarctos cinereus at a resolution (250 m) that could be used to guide management. To ensure the model was fit for purpose, we plac...

There is global concern about tropical forest degradation, in part, because of the associated loss of biodiversity. Communities and indigenous people play a fundamental role in tropical forest management and they are often efficient at preventing forest degradation. However, monitoring changes in biodiversity due to degradation, especially at a sca...

We demonstrate a technology to explore the problem of the disconnect between people and nature, the Ambient Birdhouse. Although people are surrounded by flora and fauna, nature is often hidden and difficult to learn about. Birds are active outside when many people are indoors, seen but not heard, or heard but not seen. So, can technologies play a r...

What role do people have in the Internet of Things? Compared to the impressive body of research that is currently tackling the technical issues of the Internet of Things, social aspects of agency, engagement, participation, and ethics, are receiving less attention. The goal of this 'Designing the Social Internet of Things' workshop is to contribute...

We describe the design, implementation and evaluation of the Performance Apron and Talking Bottle, two novel devices that aim to enhance and share the experience of cooking together at a distance. The devices support the exchange of voice message and cooking sounds through an augmented bottle controlled through a cooking apron embedded with wearabl...

This paper presents the concept of technology individuation and explores its role in design. Individuation expresses how, over time, a technology becomes personal and intimate, unique in purpose, orchestrated in place, and how people eventually come to rely on it to sustain connection with others. We articulate this concept as a critical vantage po...

We propose the concept of "Situational When", an approach to understanding time in interface design not as a point on a calendar or clock, but as a set of converging circumstances that constitute "the time" for happenings to take place. Time is encoded both explicitly and implicitly in designed products. However, many technologies propagate busines...

Cane-toads (Bufo marinus) are introduced to Australia to negate the insect pests. However, cane-toad population is out of control, and has highly affected native frog species for its great reproductive capacity. Therefore, it is necessary to monitor cane-toads and control their population. Recent advances in acoustic sensors make it possible to mon...

Frog population has been declining the past decade for habitat loss, invasive species, climate change, and so forth. Therefore, it is becoming ever more important to monitor the frog population. Recent advances in acoustic sensors make it possible to collect frog vocalizations over large spatio-temporal scale. Through the detection of frog calling...

This paper considers the issue of evaluation in cross-cultural contexts, where the focus on Western principles of technology quality can be problematic. We present a case study of designing a Digital Community Noticeboard with an Australian Aboriginal community, and discuss how its evaluation may be better approached in terms of 'designing futures'...

We present ongoing work that seeks to understand cross-cultural perspectives of time, and reflect these temporalities in the participatory design of a cross-cultural Digital Community Noticeboard. Time is a socio-cultural phenomenon that is experienced differently across cultures. Time practices in non-Western cultures can operate in tension with c...

This paper explores the use of probes in a very remote Australian Aboriginal community where the rich traditional and post-colonial culture is worlds away from the urban Australian home of the research team. Cultural probes and technology probes have seen an enormous uptake in HCI as methods to develop inspiration from and insights into culture. Ty...

Acoustics is a rich source of environmental information that can reflect the ecological dynamics. To deal with the escalating acoustic data, a variety of automated classification techniques have been used for acoustic patterns or scene recognition, including urban soundscapes such as streets and restaurants; and natural soundscapes such as raining...

Frog population has been declining the past decade for habitat loss, invasive species, climate change, and so forth. Therefore, it is becoming ever more important to monitor the frog population. Recent advances in acoustic sensors make it possible to collect frog vocalizations over large spatio-temporal scale. Through the detection of frog calling...

The B4 - Brisbane Backyard Bird Box is a situated, social, and gamified web based application with a dedicated recording box aimed to support wider community engagement in environmental conservation. The B4 prototype will enable urban dwellers to record audio of their environment to learn and identify the bird calls they heard in their backyard. We...

The sounds of animals leave remarkable traces of information about their habitat. Ecologists use environmental sound as a proxy to monitor the environment. This has led to the collection of massive sound archives, posing a big data problem of how to investigate it all. Visualization can transform aural information into visual representations summar...

Smart everyday objects could support the wellbeing, independent living and social connectedness of ageing people, but their successful adoption depends upon them fitting with their skills, values and goals. Many technologies fail in this respect. Our work is aimed at designs that engage older people by building on their individual affective attachm...

Sound allows people to intimately relate to nature. When people search for wildlife they often rely on their expert knowledge to recognise animal calls. The process of learning these calls involves social engagement and repeated identification in situ. Rare, cryptic, and migratory animals, however, are difficult to hear when people are only at a gi...

Frogs are often considered as excellent indicators of the overall state of the natural environment, but a steady decrease in the frog population has been noticed worldwide. To monitor this change of frog population and optimise the protection policy, frog call classification has become an important bioacoustic research topic. However, automatic aco...

In this paper, we propose an adaptive frequency scale filter bank to perform frog call classification. After preprocessing, the acoustic signal is segmented into individual syllables from which spectral peak track is extracted. Then, syllable features including track duration, dominant frequency, and oscillation rate are calculated. Next, a k-means...

Frog call classification has received increasing attention due to its importance for ecosystem. Traditionally, the classification of frog calls is solved by means of the single-instance single-label classification classifier. However, since different frog species tend to call simultaneously, classifying frog calls becomes a multiple-instance multip...

Advances in programmable field acoustic sensors provide immense data for bird species study. Manually searching for bird species present in these acoustic data is time-consuming. Although automated techniques have been used for species recognition in many studies, currently these techniques are prone to error due to the complexity of natural acoust...

In this paper we discuss results of a field study focused on understanding the ways money and financial issues are handled within family settings. Families develop 'systems'€™ or methods through which they coordinate and manage their everyday financial activities. Through an analysis of our fieldwork data collected from fifteen families, we provide...

Environmental changes have put great pressure on biological systems leading to the rapid decline of biodiversity. To monitor this change and protect biodiversity, animal vocalizations have been widely explored by the aid of deploying acoustic sensors in the field. Consequently, large volumes of acoustic data are collected. However, traditional manu...

In this paper we discuss results of a field study focused on understanding the ways money and financial issues are handled within family settings. Families develop 'systems' or methods through which they coordinate and manage their everyday financial activities. Through an analysis of our fieldwork data collected from fifteen families, we provide s...

Environmental acoustic recordings can be used to perform avian species richness surveys, whereby a trained ornithologist can observe the species present by listening to the recording. This could be made more efficient by using computational methods for iteratively selecting the richest parts of a long recording for the human observer to listen to,...

We offer the idea of world machines as a new archetype for systems that draw together computational powers to connect, sense and infer with a social agenda of cross-world collaboration. This archetype builds on existing socio-technical systems with global reach, to raise the profile of tools that maintain a collaborative agenda and resist a tendenc...

We present our observations of Aboriginal Australian practices around a custom digital noticeboard and compare our insights to related research on cultural differences, literacy and ICT4D. The digital noticeboard was created, upon a request by the community Elders, to foster communication across the community. The initial design, informed by discus...

Designing individualized technologies to suit unique needs and wants of people can enhance their quality of life. This paper explores the challenges in bringing together different communities with the necessary skill sets to design such technologies for and with people with a disability. A collaborative approach involving a maker community, a disab...

Over past few decades, frog species have been experiencing dramatic decline around the world. The reason for this decline includes habitat loss, invasive species, climate change and so on. To better know the status of frog species, classifying frogs has become increasingly important. In this study, acoustic features are investigated for multi-level...

Over past few decades, frog species have been experiencing dramatic decline around the world. The reason for this decline includes habitat loss, invasive species, climate change and so on. For achieving the information of frog species, classifying frogs has become increasingly important. In this study, acoustic features are investigated for frog ca...

Bioacoustic monitoring has become a significant research topic for species diversity conservation. Due to the development of sensing techniques, acoustic sensors are widely deployed in the field to record animal sounds over a large spatial and temporal scale. With large volumes of collected audio data, it is essential to develop semi-automatic or a...

div class="page" title="Page 1"> It’s time to consider people in designing the Internet of Things (IoT). We demonstrate a working prototype of a Messaging Kettle. It is designed to facilitate asynchronous communication and enable a sense of presence between adult children and their older parents living remotely from them through the familiar comfo...

This one-day workshop brings together researchers and practitioners to share knowledge and practices on how people can connect and interact with the Internet of Things in a playful way. Open to participants with a diverse range of interests and expertise, and by exploring novel ways to playfully connect people through their everyday objects and act...

Frogs have received increasing attention due to their effectiveness for indicating the environment change. Therefore, it is important to monitor and assess frogs. With the development of sensor techniques, large volumes of audio data (including frog calls) have been collected and need to be analysed. After transforming the audio data into its spect...

Acoustic recordings play an increasingly important role in monitoring terrestrial environments. However, due to rapid advances in technology, ecologists are accumulating more audio than they can listen to. Our approach to this big-data challenge is to visualize the content of long-duration audio recordings by calculating acoustic indices. These are...

Frog protection has become increasingly essential due to the rapid decline of its biodiversity. Therefore, it is valuable to develop new methods for studying this biodiversity. In this paper, a novel feature extraction method is proposed based on perceptual wavelet packet decomposition for classifying frog calls in noisy environments. Pre-processin...

Frog species have been declining worldwide at unprecedented rates in the past decades. There are many reasons for this decline including pollution, habitat loss, and invasive species [1]. To preserve, protect, and restore frog biodiversity, it is important to monitor and assess frog species. In this paper, a novel method using image processing tech...

We describe the design of a digital noticeboard to support communication within a remote Aboriginal community whose aspiration is to live in "both worlds", nurturing and extending their Aboriginal culture and actively participating in Western society and economy. Three bi-cultural aspects have emerged and are presented here: the need for a bi-lingu...

A prototype "messaging kettle" is described. The connected kettle aims to foster communication and engagement with an older friend or relative who lives remotely, during the routine of boiling the kettle. We describe preliminary encounters and findings from demonstrating a working prototype in morning tea gatherings of people in their 50s-late 70s...

This paper presents a system to analyze long field recordings with low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for bio-acoustic monitoring. A method based on spectral peak track, Shannon entropy, harmonic structure and oscillation structure is proposed to automatically detect anuran (frog) calling activity. Gaussian mixture model (GMM) is introduced for modell...

Acoustic classification of anurans (frogs) has received increasing attention for its promising application in biological and environment studies. In this study, a novel feature extraction method for frog call classification is presented based on the analysis of spectrograms. The frog calls are first automatically segmented into syllables. Then, spe...

Acoustic sensors allow scientists to scale environmental monitoring over large spatiotemporal scales. The faunal vocalisations captured by these sensors can answer ecological questions, however, identifying these vocalisations within recorded audio is difficult: automatic recognition is currently intractable and manual recognition is slow and error...

Acoustic recordings of the environment are an important aid to ecologists monitoring biodiversity and environmental health. However, rapid advances in recording technology, storage and computing make it possible to accumulate thousands of hours of recordings, of which, ecologists can only listen to a small fraction. The big-data challenge addressed...

This paper collates recent research on mobile phone use in Indigenous communities in Australia. Its key finding is that mobile phones are heavily used in these communities, albeit in unique and unusual ways that may be difficult to comprehend beneath 'top-down' measurements. Rather than framing these uses as being compromises made in lieu of approp...

Individualization of design is often necessary particularly when designing with people with disabilities. Maker communities, with their flexible Do-It-Yourself (DIY) practices, offer potential to support individualized and cost-effective product design. However, efforts to adapt DIY practices in designing with people with disabilities tend to face...

Environmental monitoring has become increasingly important due to the significant impact of human activities and climate change on biodiversity. Environmental sound sources such as rain and insect vocalizations are a rich and underexploited source of information in environmental audio recordings. This paper is concerned with the classification of r...

Citizen science projects have demonstrated the advantages of people with limited relevant prior knowledge participating in research. However, there is a difference between engaging the general public in a scientific project and entering an established expert community to conduct research. This paper describes our ongoing acoustic biodiversity monit...

In our large library of annotated environmental recordings of animal vocalizations, searching annotations by label can return thousands of results. We propose a heat map of aggregated annotation time and frequency bounds, maintaining the shape of the annotations as they appear on the spectrogram. This compactly displays the distribution of annotati...

This paper explores an emerging paradigm for HCI design research based primarily upon engagement, reciprocity and doing. Much HCI research begins with an investigatory and analytic ethnographic approach before translating to design. Design may come much later in the process and may never benefit the community that is researched. However in many set...