About Ursa Eco-Tech
We make the software ecological survey teams use every day: recording in the field, checking in the office, and handing in reports that meet the guidelines.
Where Ursa is used
Four ecological consulting firms in Taiwan use Ursa under contract: surveyors record with the app in the field, team leads check the records in the web review version, and the report engine turns the same data into species lists, statistics and report drafts.
What we care about
Survey data belongs to the survey team
Each company's data is kept separate. We do not pool, analyse or sell our customers' survey data, and the locations of protected and sensitive species are treated as confidential.
Open calculations
The formulas for diversity indices, basal area and importance values are written out on the tool pages. The product and the free tools on this site use the same definitions, so anyone can check the numbers.
Neutrality
Ursa is a software company and does not take on survey contracts itself. Our tools and data services never steer users towards any particular consultancy.
Editorial and review principles
Articles are reviewed by an ecology professor before they are published, and each page shows its publication date and reviewer. Where an article discusses regulations, the official text prevails, and we update the article and its date when the rules change.
The app, the back end and the tools on this site are checked against one shared set of test data, and a change goes live only when all three agree. The coordinate converters are also checked against the open-source PROJ library, to within a millimetre.
How we build the product
The product improves through field use. When a team lead or surveyor reports a problem, we reproduce it on a simulator, fix it, and add that situation to the automated tests so it cannot come back. Before every release, the main workflows are run end to end in each role: team lead, surveyor and manager.
The name
Ursa is Latin for bear, and the name of the Great Bear constellation. Its seven brightest stars have guided travellers for millennia; we want our tools to do the same between the field and the report.