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

Modularization of DINA-Specify

Acknowledgements DINA-Specify consortium

partners Swedish Museum of Natural

History EU BON BalticDiversity (EU Regional

Development Fund) Swedish GBIF node Swedish LifeWatch Swedish Research Council