The INRAM Biodiversity Project An Overview

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The INRAM Biodiversity Project An Overview

• Christopher K. Frazier
• INRAM Biodiversity Program ManagerUniversity of
  New MexicoAlbuquerque, NM, USA

AAAS Review University of New Mexico 2003-05-20
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INRAM Biodiversity Websitebiodiversity.inram.org
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INRAM Biodiversity Website
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Six INRAM Divisions

• LEC Laboratory of Environmental Chemistry
  (NMSU)
• Land Management (Highlands University)
• Hydrology (NMT)
• LESA Laboratory for Environmental Spatial
  Analysis (NMSU)
• Biodiversity (UNM)
• VCE Virtual Center for the Environment (UNM)

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Six INRAM Divisions

• LEC Laboratory of Environmental Chemistry
• Land management
• Hydrology
• LESA Laboratory for Environmental Spatial
  Analysis
• Biodiversity
• VCE Virtual Center for the Environment

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INRAM Divisions With Biodiversity Components

• Biodiversity
• Accumulate, georeference, and provide information
  on NM biodiversity including museum specimen
  info.
• LESA Laboratory for Environmental Spatial
  Analysis
• Provide GIS consultation, training and support
  provide geospatial NM natural resource data sets
  and analytic tools .
• VCE Virtual Center for the Environment
• Education/outreach arm of INRAM. Education
  oriented web site.

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INRAM Shared Resources

• Biodiversity, LESA and VCE
• Shared hardware (Sun Fire 280R Webserver, Dell
  PowerEdge 2650 fileserver)..
• Shared development teams (sys admin, web site,
  database design)..
• Shared data resources (museum biodiversity data
  set, geospatial natural resources data).

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INRAM Biodiversity

• Staff support for participating collections
• Hired collection managers at three universities.
• Undergraduate and graduate support
• Provided to hire students for data entry and
  quality control.
• Equipment and support
• Provided computers and network solutions.
• Providing support for choosing and implementing
  database software.

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Museum Challenges

• Some collections databased, some not started.
• Different database software and database models.
• Different degrees of technological advancement.
• Large state, collections are far from each other.
• Different degrees of interest in combined data
  sets.
• Different data release policies and concerns.

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Philosophical Foundations

• Real data are the specimens and the expertise of
  collection managers and curators.
• Use open source technology whenever possible.
• Modular and flexible development scheme.
• True collaborative effort.
• Deliver useable product.

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Data to Information
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Biological Museum Collection Data Management
System
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Data Management System

• Excellent graphical user interface.
• Easy to use and customize.
• Allows accurate, rapid and effective information
  capture.
• Uniformity of data parsing.
• Full data management system.
• Will allow automatic export and integration with
  central server.
• In-state tech support and user base.

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The INRAM Georeferencing Protocol
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The Distributed Network Model
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Distributed Model Down Side

• Requires Dedicated Servers at Nodes
• Systems Expertise at nodes
• Overkill
• Dependent on Slowest Network Connection
• What they provide is what you get

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The INRAM Network Design
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Link Back to Data Providers
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The INRAM Network Design
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The INRAM Network Design
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Transport Protocol

• No single solution due to varying technological
  capabilities,differing data release policies and
  differing interest in participating.
• Variable activity levels.
• Not a true distributed system.
• Asynchronous, unsupervised data submission.

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Transport Protocol the Solution

• Customized data views at data provider level.
• Metadata on each dataset provider rules.
• Customized transport mechanisms from email to
  automatic text or XML.
• Provide tools for Data Provider validation.

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INRAM Biodiversity

• First year goals
• Create an all-taxa, combined database of specimen
  records from four NM collections (UNM, NMSU,
  ENMU, WNMU).
• Provide a web-based query interface to these
  data.
• Create multiple output options including html
  format, text, and mapped data sets..
• Imposed deadline
• Create a demo of capabilities within six months
  from funding inception (October, 2002).

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Query Interface
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HTML Output
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Exact Locality Map Output
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County Map Distributions
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Future Directions

• Georeference specimen data.
• Create taxonomic thesaurus.
• Add access to other biodiversity data
  sets(Heritage Program data, checklists, range
  maps, etc.).
• Develop data use agreements and protocols.