Global Biodiversity Informatics Outlook
- 2. Focus Area: Culture Making data sharing the norm Ensuring data can be understood and used across systems and across disciplines Creating a stable data archiving infrastructure to ensure no data are lost or mislaid Creating a policy framework to encourage sharing and reuse of biodiversity data Benefiting from the expertise of the whole global community
- 3. Focus Area: Data Using data mining and semantic tools to turn unstructured data into information Accelerating the rate at which historic specimen- based data are made discoverable Making field data accessible and interoperable Incorporating data arising from genomics Harnessing automated monitoring technology to provide planet-wide surveys
- 4. Focus Area: Evidence Creating a network of expertise to manage biodiversity data Providing a stable and comprehensive catalogue of all species Making accessible all data about when and where an organism has been recorded Providing the framework to capture trait information and interactions between species Delivering access to all published biodiversity knowledge
- 5. Focus Area: Understanding Estimating biodiversity patterns from available evidence Using predictive modelling to assess status, trends and impacts Building virtual models from molecules to ecosystems Giving access to information in ways that will revolutionize how we understand biodiversity Concentrating on the areas of greatest change and uncertainty
Editor's Notes
- #2: The GBIO FrameworkThe framework includes four focus areas, each with a set of related components. Each focus area – and the individual components – can be progressed independently but investments in each area will complement and reinforce each other, delivering wide-reaching benefits to many stakeholders. Culture: This area focuses on practices and infrastructure for sharing data. Investments here will ensure that digital biodiversity data benefit the whole global community and that these data can be preserved and improved for future use. Data: This area addresses the need to transform historical biodiversity knowledge into usable digital forms and to ensure that all new measurements and observations automatically contribute to a global knowledge resource. Evidence: This area deals with organizing and assessing data from all historical and new sources to provide clear, consistent and comprehensive views of everything that has been recorded about any species or ecosystem. Understanding: This area builds models from recorded measurements and observations to support data-driven research and evidence-based planning. Key deliverables include assessments and indicators of the state of biodiversity.
- #3: Focus area A: CulturePutting the foundations in place to make biodiversity data an openly shared, freely available, connected resource. Components:• A1. Open access and reuse culture: make open sharing of data standard practice through public funding and other incentives and through proper attribution and recognition of primary data resources, data creators and curators, including individuals as well as institutions.• A2. Data standards: deliver a flexible set of data standards that support the reuse and interoperability of all biodiversity data.• A3. Persistent storage and archives: provide a distributed network of data repositories for all types of biodiversity data, along with consistent handling of metadata, identifiers, licences, tools and services.• A4. Policy incentives: ensure that public policies, legislation and funding initiatives at all scales combine to reinforce this strategy and support its individual components.• A5. Biodiversity knowledge network: create the technical infrastructure to support curation and annotation of data using the best-available community expertise, in a way that makes such curation immediately visible to future users as well as providing feedback to data holders. Progress: With the exception of data standards, where there has been a long-standing community effort to develop common vocabularies and structures, progress at the global scale has generally been limited in this area although individual countries have made significant advances towards making scientific data openly accessible.
- #4: Focus area B: DataMobilizing biodiversity data from all sources and organizing it in forms that can support large-scale analysis and modelling. Components:• B1. Published materials: developing mechanisms to extract the biodiversity data currently embedded in publications and other, multimedia formats and to provide them as freely available, standardized and structured information.• B2. Collections and specimens: developing and sharing more efficient techniques to accelerate the efforts to digitize and capture historic data from collections.• B3. Field surveys and observations: capturing all biodiversity observations, including sounds and images, and making them available as soon as they are made, or within a defined period.• B4. Sequences and genomes: capturing all relevant data from genomic activity, including vouchered reference sequences, environmental metagenomics, genetic variation and full genomes.• B5. Automated and remote-sensed observations: exploiting opportunities for automated and semiautomated recording and identification of species and populations from sources ranging from satellite images down to automated gene sequencing. Progress: This focus area is probably the most advanced of the four, with the community already undertaking significant digitization projects and most new information now automatically held in digital form. However, such is the scale of the task that future projects will need to use more automation and algorithmic techniques. Moreover, digitized information of all kinds needs to be standardized and given a structure that enables it to be automatically processed: the importance of this task should not be underestimated.
- #5: Focus area C: EvidenceProviding the tools to support consistent and comprehensive global discovery and use of data from all sources about the biodiversity of any defined area over time, covering all taxonomic groups. Components:• C1. Fitness-for-use and annotation: an efficient mechanism to enable amateurs, experts and automated tools to correct and annotate individual data elements to improve quality and their fitness to be used for particular purposes, and to ensure that these annotations have to be made only once.• C2. Taxonomic framework: a comprehensive, expert curated catalogue of species, including data on names, classification and phylogeny (evolutionary relatedness) and incorporating taxa lacking formal names.• C3. Integrated occurrence data: bringing together data from all sources to document the known occurrences of all species in time and space.• C4. Aggregated species trait data: providing the tools to bring together all available data on species traits and interactions and ensure it is held in forms suitable for use in digital analysis and modelling.• C5. Comprehensive knowledge access: making all published biodiversity knowledge linked and accessible through the rich indexing of biodiversity literature, data, multimedia and other resources, including presentation of the information as species pages and via web services. Progress: Some of this work is already on course and significant progress has been made, although further investment will be needed to complete the process. International collaboration has delivered key components for building the taxonomic framework (C2) and work on integrated occurrence data (C3) is already mature and operating at a global scale. Mechanisms for recording fitness-for-use and annotations (C1) are starting to be developed in pilot while many of the individual pieces needed for comprehensive knowledge access (C5) have been trialled in different projects, but not brought together in one coherent framework. Standards for species trait data and interactions are starting to be adopted but there is as yet no common infrastructure in place to capture and query such data in a consistent way.
- #6: Focus area D: UnderstandingUsing the combined biodiversity data from multiple sources to generate new information, inform policy and decision makers, and help educate wider society to improve the way we manage the Earth’s resources. Components:• D1. Multiscale spatial modelling: Integrate data collected across disciplines and combine them with remote-sensed and geographic information systems (GIS) datasets to create the fullest-possible picture of geographical species distributions.• D2. Trends and predictions: Integrate historical data and changes over time to create predictive modeling tools to support decision making, make biodiversity estimates and predict the potential impact of changing conditions anywhere on Earth.• D3. Modelling biological systems: Build virtual models – from the molecular level to whole ecosystems – to improve understanding of biological systems and integrate that knowledge into other models.• D4. Visualization and dissemination: Provide the tools to make biodiversity information accessible and understandable by diverse audiences, increasing biodiversity literacy among the public and policy makers.• D5. Prioritizing new data capture: Use accumulating data to identify and prioritize new opportunities for data capture and to provide a timely response to changes in biodiversity patterns. Progress: This is the least developed of the four focus areas, and one, modeling biological systems (D3) has not progressed much beyond the conceptual stage. The biodiversity informatics community will have to draw heavily on the knowledge of other disciplines — from climate modelling and socio-economics, to games development and web design.
- #7: The GBIO is intended to be a dynamic and interactive process. The website at www.biodiversityinformatics.org will be updated with community input on projects, solutions and funding sources relevant to each component. Please visit this website and share your ideas and expertise.