building sustainable biodiversity information systems
DESCRIPTION
Building Sustainable Biodiversity Information Systems. Fredrik Ronquist Dept. Bioinformatics and Genetics Swedish Museum of Natural History. Who am I?. Lead the development of MorphBank, an open web repository for biodiversity images, 1998–2007 - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
Building Sustainable Biodiversity Information
Systems
Fredrik RonquistDept. Bioinformatics and Genetics
Swedish Museum of Natural History
Who am I? Lead the development of MorphBank, an open web
repository for biodiversity images, 1998–2007 Organizing the DINA-Specify effort, an international
initiative to develop an open-source web-based system for collection management
Our group is a partner or node in GBIF, LifeWatch, EU-BON / GEO BON, BalticDiversity
We contribute or have contributed to BioCASE, OpenUp, PESI, Synthesys, etc
Since 2011 a member of the Swedish Research Council panel on eScience infrastructure
A Global Network of Regional Centers?
North American North American Center for Center for
Biodiversity Biodiversity InformationInformation
South American South American Center for Center for
Biodiversity Biodiversity InformationInformation
African Center for African Center for Biodiversity Biodiversity InformationInformation
Australian Center Australian Center for Biodiversity for Biodiversity
InformationInformation
Asian Center for Asian Center for Biodiversity Biodiversity InformationInformation
European Center European Center for Biodiversity for Biodiversity
InformationInformation
Involves 29 mostly European partners Aims to build a substantial part of the Group on Earth Observation’s
Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON) Will provide ”near-real-time data — both from on-ground observations
and remote sensing — to stake holders and end users ranging from local to global levels”
”... intends to develop a full-scale model for a durable mechanism for higher level integration of biodiversity information providers and users through a network of networks approach scalable from local to global biodiversity observation systems”
Advance technological/informatics infrastructures for GEO BON Improve the range and quality of methods and tools for assessment,
analysis, and visualization of drivers of change and biodiversity indicators
Five-year project 2012–2017. Long-term sustainability: LifeWatch (?)
A European infrastructure in development Part of the ESFRI Roadmap 2006 (ESFRI = European Strategy Forum on
Research Infrastructures) Preparatory phase 2008–2011 with participation of 19 European
countries Currently five participating countries (Hungary, Italy, The Netherlands,
Romania, Spain) Major national LifeWatch initiatives include Swedish LifeWatch, ~ 5 M €
budget for 2010-2014, coordinated by the Swedish Species Information Centre in Uppsala
Focus in Swedish LifeWatch is on development of analytical tools for Swedish biodiversity and climate data
Long-term sustainability? For analytical and visualization tools, not for digitization or for systems for
digital asset management and data delivery? Will the project gin traction in Europe? LifeWatch – GBIF competing for funds?
The Collaborative Approach
Collaboration means significant social and technical challenges Success requires modular design of large systems to allow semi-
independent development in contributing development teams Some parallel development is unavoidable and even desirable Coordinating efforts and maintaining a consistent overall system is
challenging Establishment of standard interfaces to modules: a role for TDWG Natural History Collection Institutions provide a good institutional
platform for sustainable solutions: Long-term time perspective Digital assets - just another collection Strong community increasingly used to international collaborations eScience competence improving rapidly
Long-term perspective requires patience
Web-based system for assembling, managing and sharing data associated with natural history collections
Scope includes botany, zoology, paleontology, geology, observation records, molecular data and living collections
Based on cross-institutional open-source development starting with Specify and Morphbank as initial building blocks
Aim is national or large-institution installations servicing multiple institutions and a range of users, from professional collection managers and curators to collections-oriented citizen scientists
Current consortium partners include software development teams as well as institutions or national initiatives interested in hosting software installations
Project info and news at http://dina-project.net
DINA(Digital Information System for Natural History
Data)
DINA-Specify Consortium Current partners
Biodiversity Institute (Specify team), University of Kansas, USA
Botany and Biodiversity Informatics, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Ottawa, Canada
Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin, Germany Natural History Museum, University of Tartu,
Estonia Danish Museum of Natural History, Copenhagen,
Denmark Swedish Museum of Natural History, Stockholm,
Sweden Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh Possibly Harvard University Herbaria, Harvard
University, USA
Memorandum of Cooperation ready for signing before the end of the year (download from http://dina-project.net)
Consortium Structure Core members:
Commit a full-time equivalent of staff resources to the development of consortium goals, including at least a half-time resource for software development
Are represented in the SETF and are expected to contribute actively to its work Commit to work under SETF guidelines
Associate members: Commit to support consortium goals Do not commit any staff resources and are not represented in the SETF Provide technical expertise and feedback on system design
Funding of consortium contributions may involve both temporary and permanent funding sources
Members may change their status (associate or core) at any time with previous notice and due respect to previous commitments to the consortium
Members may leave the consortium at any time Memorandum of Cooperation has a five-year time frame with possibility of
extension
DINA: EU-BON Objectives Integrate DINA-Specify with taxonomic backbone for Europe and
other tools (e.g. molecular biodiversity data and digitization tools) developed within EU-BON
Improve data mobilization through real-time sharing of data across relevant networks (GBIF, BioCASE etc)
Development of citizen science (amateur naturalists) interface to the system
Development of interfaces in relevant EU-BON languages Support for EU-BON institutions that would like to install the system Support for institutional and citizen-science users of the system Participate in targeted digitization and mobilization efforts based on
gap analysis
Consortium OrganizationInternational
Steering Committee
(all members)
Task Force I Task Force II
Development Team 1
Development Team II
Development Team III
System Engineering Task Force
(core members)
DINA-DK
Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin
DINA organization
NRM
NRM Steering Group
Digital Collection Managers
DINA-SE development team
DINA-SE steering group
Agriculture Canada, Ottawa, Canada
Specify teamKansas, USA
Natural History Museum, Tartu
DINA InternationalCouncil
Sweden
Karin Karlsson (50 %) Kevin Holston
Markus Englund (80 %)Ida Li
DINA-SE development team
Markus Skyttner
Ingimar Erlingsson