Canadensys - Federal Geospatial Platform

CanadensysA Network for Mobilizing Primary

Biodiversity Knowledge

David Shorthouse, Christian Gendreau

Canadensys HeadquartersUniversité de MontréalBiodiversity Centre

Network11 universities, 2 botanical gardens, 2

museums

GoalMobilize 3 million specimenrecords (20%) by end 2013

Canadensys Processes

http://www.canadensys.nethttps://github.com/Canadensys

Carole SinouData Publication Support Professional

Canadensys Products

Where = georeferencingWhat = species identity

Processing

Searchable data

Web app

DarwinCore Archive

narwhal-processor

PostgreSQLPostGIS

ElasticSearch

Canadensys Explorer Windshaft

pull from

read raw data

insert data

query

narwhal-processor

Goal Standardize data for optimal retrieval• Geography (continent, country, coordinates …)• Dates (different formats, partial dates)• Numerics (allow interval search)• Scientific names (atomize, aggregate)

Geospatial stack

Integrate Publishing Toolkit 2.0.4

• http://code.google.com/p/gbif-providertoolkit/• Permits management, administration, publishing of

occurrence, checklist, metadata resources– Create metadata (Ecological Metadata Language, eml.xml)– Map resource to DarwinCore and optional extensions

• Register resources with GBIF• RSS feed for changes (eg updates) in resources

Aa aleacea

Limulus polyphemus

Kiwa hirsuta

Osedax frankpressi

Kingia australis

Pieris japponica

Pieris rapae

Trypanosoma brucei

Homo sapiens

Ba humbugi

The problem with scientific names

• No comprehensive catalog of species• Names ≠ species• The species problem – species concepts• Competing classifications / phylogenies• Many names for one taxon• One name for many taxa• ‘Names’ are more than code-compliant scientific names

A working solution

• Inclusive– Accommodate alternate perspectives

• Reconciliation– Map names among and between each other

• Disambiguation– Context to assign homonymic names to rightful place

Current Activities

Proposition

David Shorthouse, Christian Gendreau

www.canadensys.netdavid.shorthouse@umontreal.ca

christian.gendreau@umontreal.ca@canadensys