Linking social media to biosecurity surveillance
MyPestGuide™ Reporter is an easy-to-use reporting tool, designed to get the community involved with pest surveillance. When combined with MyPestGuide™ Grapes app, it provides a powerful identification and reporting tool for both hobby and commercial vineyards.
To increase community uptake and awareness of the apps, DAFWA has released an updated version of MyPestGuide™ Reporter that allows users to share their reports with friends on social media networks.
MyPestGuide™ reports and images can now be shared to a range of social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. The extra functionality was added in the hopes that it will encourage the public to send in more pest reports and ultimately, get more eyes focussed on pests in WA vineyards.
By incorporating social media platforms, these observations promote community awareness of biosecurity, whilst capturing valuable information within a searchable database that enables DAFWA to better support WA trade and market access and protect the environment.
MyPestGuide™ Reporter is a free reporting and identification tool that allows community members or vineyard workers to take up to four photos of a pest and send the reports directly to DAFWA. Department experts will then identify the pest and send a response back to the reporter’s device.
Every report received by the department, whether it is an exotic pest or not, supports WA vineyard biosecurity and protects market access.
Download MyPestGuide™ apps at Google Play Store and Apple iTunes Store. To see what has been reported, please view the map of shared community reports on the MyPestGuide™ reports web page.
The MyPestGuide™ apps are part of a suite of biosecurity surveillance tools developed and released by DAFWA as part of the Royalties for Regions funded Boosting Biosecurity Defences project.