Skip to main content

Naturblick - Discovering Nature in the City

Logo of "Naturblick - Stadtnatur entdecken" on a meadow with berlin city nature and television tower in the background

With our smartphone app Naturblick, we offer you a digital approach to experience nature in the city. With different functions, plants and animals can be identified and understood in the context of the city without much prior knowledge. With the automatic image and sound recognition tool, you can recognise the different species in your everyday life. The variety of species can be explored with identification tools for trees, birds, herbs and wildflowers, amphibians, mammals, butterflies, reptiles, bees and wasps and more.

Take photos of plants and identify them with our automatic image recognition tool. Record bird calls and identify which bird is singing with automatic sound recognition tool.

Download the app for free from Google Play ot the App Store.

Take part

We are continuously developing the Naturblick smartphone app and our platform in terms of content and technology. In doing so we are guided by your feedback. We thank all who point out errors and/or make suggestions for improvement.

Write us your feedback, or become a beta tester

About Naturblick

In an interdisciplinary team we research and develop digital tools to experience urban nature. For example, we are testing the use of pattern recognition in species identification.
With our smartphone app Naturblick we support the direct experience of nature in the city. With a variety of functions you can explore nature in the city, identify animals and plants and save your observations.
The platform will allow you to read all art portraits and use our open content even without a smartphone. In the planned login area you will be able to manage and sort your observations from the app according to your wishes and share them with Citizen Science projects.
We are continuously working on the improvement and expansion of the app and platform. Our work lives from the participation and feedback of our users.

Overview data collection

All data is collected for exclusively scientific purposes. As soon as the data is no longer needed, we delete it. Which data is collected and to what extent may also partly result from technical necessities. When using this app, the following data is collected and stored anonymously on the servers of the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin:

Sound and image recording
The app uses the phone's microphone and camera. The recordings are saved anonymously and used, for example, as training material for pattern recognition. If you wish, you can enter an author name for the recordings you make. This data is also used for quality assurance of observations reported in observation networks.

Metadata of the recordings or observation (type, coordinates, time, number, behaviour)
The app needs access to the location to record the metadata on coordinates and time. This data is used when reporting observations in observation networks and when displaying observations on the map.

Device ID
The app needs permission to access the phone (phone status and identity) in order to read the device ID. This is sent to our server in encrypted form so that we do not have any information about the unencrypted device ID. This enables us to protect our pattern recognition service against misuse without user registration (LogIn). It also allows us to scientifically evaluate the use of the app without having to collect further data.

Metadata of the identification results (coordinates, time, identification process)
Your anonymised identification results and the use of the identification tools we have developed are scientifically evaluated. Based on this, the app will be further developed and improved on the one hand, and the effectiveness of the tools we have developed will be examined on the other.

Data protection is very important to us. Further information on data protection can be found here and in the imprint of Naturblick.