A Shiny app to explore Biotic data within the Institute of Marine Research Norway (IMR) database. Version 0.6.69 (alpha), 2023-03-16.
This is the developmental version of the Biotic Explorer Shiny app intended for examination and manipulation of the Norwegian Maritime Data Center (NMD) standard Biotic xml files as well as the IMR’s Biotic database (see the User guide section). The application has been developed by the Stox team at the IMR.
The app can be run on a desktop (i.e. your computer) for local files and on a server for both local files and the entire IMR Biotic database.
A server version of Biotic Explorer is located on IMR servers and can be run through any modern web browser given that you access it inside the firewall of the institute (i.e. in the institute intranet or through a VPN).
A desktop version of the app can be installed on any modern computer. The app requires R and RStudio. Install these software on your computer following the instructions on the respective webpages. Open RStudio and install the Shiny package:
install.packages("shiny")Running the app for the first time automatically installs and loads packages used by the app. If you encounter installation problems, please read the error messages carefully. If you cannot solve these errors by installing the required packages manually, please contact the app maintainer.
Click “Clone or download” -> “Download ZIP”. Find the zip file (typically in your Downloads folder) and extract it to a desired location. Open the app.R file in RStudio and click “Run app”.
You may also run the app directly from GitHub, but this will place the files in a temporary directory and requires downloading the app every time you restart it.
library(shiny)
shiny::runGitHub("BioticExplorer", "MikkoVihtakari")The Biotic Explorer interface consists of the sidebar, main panel, process symbol, and help button (Figure 1). The sidebar consists of tabs. The main panel consists of different elements depending on tab selection. The data interface consists of data selection fields, data overview, and subset buttons.
Figure 1. The Biotic Explorer interface consists of the sidebar (1), main panel (2), process symbol (3), and help button (4). The sidebar consists of tabs (1a). The main panel consists of different elements depending on tab selection. The data interface consists of data selection fields (2a), data overview (2b), and subset buttons (2c).
The process symbol has two states: IMR logo and BUSY icon (Figure 2). The BUSY icon indicates that the app is processing information and you should avoid clicking tabs, boxes or buttons while this state is active. The processing state is only indicated when internal R processes are running and does not include the javascript/HTML GUI processes following the R processes. It may therefore take a little bit of time until the app becomes responsive after the BUSY symbol has disappeared. Please be patient while using the app. There may be large amounts of data behind each processing step.
Figure 2. Process symbol states. The app is ready to receive orders when the IMR logo is shown (left). The app is busy when the BUSY icon is shown (right). Avoid clicking anything while the app is busy.
Click ‘Load data & filter -> From the database’. Select the desired data and click ‘Send inquiry’. The ‘BUSY’ symbol on the left top corner will disappear when the operation is done. This may take time depending on the size of the selected dataset. You will get an overview of selected data and positions on the right. You can now further limit the dataset using the ‘Subset’ button and reset the data selection using the ‘Reset’ button.
Click ‘Load data & filter -> From files -> Browse..’ and select one or multiple .xml files from your computer. An overview of data and sampling station locations will be shown below. Use the ‘Filter data by’ options to select data you want to keep. Click the ‘Subset’ button once you are ready and see how the overview will change based on the information you selected. The ‘Reset’ button will reset the selection
Click ‘Load data & filter -> From files -> Browse..’ and open an .rds file saved using the app (see ‘Download’). You can now continue working on data from an earlier Biotic Explorer session.
Click the ‘Cruise overview’ tab to see all cruises in the dataset. These data comprise of the ‘mission’ element in NMD Biotic files.
The ‘Overview’ tab lists selected plots to establish an overview of the ‘fishstation’ and ‘catchsample’ elements in NMD Biotic files. ‘Map of catches’ tab shows a location overview of catches and the ‘Examine data’ the data in a tabular form.
The ‘Overview’ tab shows a general overview of the ‘individual’ and ‘agedetermination’ elements in NMD Biotic files. The ‘Species plots’ tab can be used to generate plots describing basic life-history parameters of a species with sufficient data and the ‘Examine data’ tab shows the data in a tabular form.
Data from a Biotic Explorer session can be downloaded using the ‘Download -> Data’ tab. If you want to reopen the data in Biotic Explorer or open the data in R, use the ‘R’ option without changing ‘Data to download’ options. This will save the data as an .rds file, which can be opened using the readRDS function in R and reopened using Biotic Explorer. Data can also be downloaded as .zip compressed .csv files or as an Excel file. The data are automatically placed to tabs in Excel files.
You can select which Biotic Explorer figures to download and in which format using the ‘Download -> Figures’ tab. If you want to modify the figures beyond the options given in the app, you may download Biotic Explorernd modify the figure functions listed under ‘R/figure_functions.R’.
Any contributions to the app are more than welcome. Please contact the app creator Mikko Vihtakari (mikko.vihtakari@hi.no) to discuss your ideas on improving the app.
Running the app automatically installs following packages:
- shiny: The app has been written om Shiny.
- shinyFiles: Used to up- and download files.
- shinydashboard: Used for the dashboard.
- DT: Used for data tables.
- data.table: Used to make data processing quicker.
- dtplyr: Used for dplyr syntax applied to data.tables as well as quick database management.
- tidyverse: Used for data manipulation and plots.
- RstoxData: Used to read NMD .xml files.
- devtools: Used to download the dependencies only available on GitHub.
- leaflet: Used for interactive maps.
- leaflet.minicharts: Used for interactive maps.
- mapview: Used for interactive maps.
- plotly: Used for interactive plots.
- openxlsx: Used to write MS Excel files.
- scales: Used to scale ggplot axes.
- fishmethods: Used to fit growth models
- viridis: Provides viridis color scale for Leaflet maps.
- DBI: Used for database operations
- MonetDB.R: The database interface package for the BioticExplorer database
2020-05-13 Added complete database support. All features visioned at the beginning of the development have now been incorporated. Making the features to work as planned, bug-fixing and polish remain.
2020-01-22 An update preparing for beta-release. Many new added features. Unstable, full of bugs and undocumented.
2019-07-11 Fixed a number of Windows related problems. The app should (hopefully) work now on most institutional machines.
2019-07-08 Uploaded the first alpha version. The app works, but does not contain all features yet. This version is meant for internal testing.