Towards a global biological information infrastructure

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Towards a global biological information
infrastructure

• Issues, roles, technologies, synergies

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Challenge

• The Y3K problem
• Fast rate of extinction 104/y
• Main reasons Habitat destruction, lack of value
  of biodiversity, lack of knowledge about it
• Slow and unchanged rate of discovery 104/y and
  poor use of knowledge
• Main reason Difficulty in information access

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How did this happen?

• Working habits of taxonomists taxonomy not
  understood as information science
• Taxonomy often seen as endless sink of resources
• Volatile Linnéan naming system does not support
  information access
• Built-in slowness in the Codes
• Lack of on-line publishing
• Unclear intellectual property rights
  repatriation?
• Proliferation of initiatives and networks sign of
  necessary ingredients missing

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Responses

• CBD /CHM
• MAB BIS
• DIVERSITAS
• Species 2000
• IOPI /TDWG
• IABIN
• GBIF

• NBII
• ITIS
• ILDIS
• INBio
• CONABIO
• ETC/NC

• BIN21
• BCIS
• IBIN
• WCMC
• ECNC
• Tree of Life

Where is the GenBank of biodiversity?
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Global Biodiversity Information Facility

• See the GBIF slides
• Managed by ISC
• To start Q1-2001
• Call for hosting and staffing Q3-2000
• Open for membership for countries
• Needs partnerships and contributions
• Technology now the challenge

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Taxo-nomic and bio-diversity data are not the same
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Need and opportunity for new technology

• Biodiversity information is extremely distributed
  
• Consists of names, species/taxa/clades
  (observational records), habitats (sites)
• Any site (104) with such data needs a server
• Internet finally sufficient to solve problem
• Naming, broadcasting, with IPv6
• Data interchange AND presentation with XML
• People, organisation, role data in LDAP
• Storage in any database, with resource agent...

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Distributed objects...
...InfoSleuth and EDEN style
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GBIF architecture with EDEN
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What is in for EEA, EPA, ...

• Major users of biodiversity information
• Probably the best technology around (EDEN)
• EEA implementing EC-CHM

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Example questions

• What is the protection status of species X in
  countries Y?
• Show observations made of species X in countries
  Y in 2001?
• How many species of group ZZ have declined
  /increased in 2001?
• I have this unknown specimen Z of group ZZ that
  has characters I,J,K. Show homepages of all
  known related species. Show their type specimens.
• Are there any endangered species observed /
  predicted in this area A?