Papers and Posters

Abstract

Global Infrastructure for Biodiversity Informatics
Donald Hobern , Global Biodiversity Information Facility Secretariat, Universitetsparken 15, 2100 København Ø , Denmark

As increasing numbers of portals and application tools make use of biodiversity data, there is a need for a several shared resources to be made available as common infrastructure. In 2003 and 2004 GBIF has been focussing on the development of a registry of biodiversity data resources and on an index of biodiversity data records. These will be made available as publicly accessible resources for use by the whole community. The code for the Data Portal will be redeveloped to allow it to be deployed for national or thematic portals.

Other key resources will also be required in order to support biodiversity informatics as a flexible discipline. GBIF wishes to start work on a Schema Repository to provide easy access to biodiversity-related schemas and associated documentation, including mappings between related concepts in different schemas. This service should make it easy for software tools to connect to data services using different schemas and to transform their outputs into preferred formats. It should also allow software interfaces to present users with meaningful descriptions of the significance of different data elements.

GBIF is also investigating mechanisms to associate specimens, observations, taxon concepts, etc. with persistent and reusable globally unique identifiers. Such identifiers would not only make it simpler to refer to a specific item, but would also assist tools with detection of duplicate records retrieved via different routes.

Central services will also be developed to perform a range of validation checks for XML-based biodiversity data.