HECTOR (Human-Elephant Conflict Tool for Ongoing Research) is an easy to use mobile application to assist with informed decision making and to make allowance to log elephant encounters immediately into a centralized database.
Modern back-end analytics and the ability to export forms into CSV and PDF format allow for quick and useful analysis of the data captured by people participating in various projects in Thailand and other HEC areas in Asia and Africa.
HECTOR works globally and allows users to easily report human-elephant conflict incidents in real time and assist with informed decision making. Citizen scientists help researchers understand what is causing elephants to leave protected areas as well as establish effective means of intervention. Data collected through the app includes an examination of the reasons for undesired elephant behaviour, a quantification of the damage and the effectiveness of the applied deterrence methods.
The back-end provides instant statistics, which are essential to planning strategies to reduce the damage to people, property, and elephants.
Get your own version of HECTOR!
In collaboration with our IT partner Electric Bench, we developed and tested HECTOR to monitor human-elephant conflicts in Thailand. We are happy to share this useful tool with our colleagues working in other HEC areas around the world. Therefore, we welcome conservation organizations, scientists and park managers to contact us to set up their own projects and forms in the HECTOR admin panel.
Download Hector for your device by searching “HECTOR app” in either Google Play or iTunes. You can download the Hector user guide 1.1 here.
A big thanks to Electric Bench and the INNO fund of WWF to help us realize the development of HECTOR.