ViBRANT—Virtual Biodiversity Research and Access Network for Taxonomy

Project overview Dave Roberts, Simon Rycroft & Vincent S. Smith Natural History Museum, UK

The problem The challenges of 21 st century taxonomy 14
Inventory the Earth’s species
Document their relationships
“ Publish” & apply these data
Goal…
1.8 M described spp. (10M names)
300M pages (over last 250 years)
1.5-3B specimens
Data set… People…
4-6,000 taxonomists
30-40,000 “pro-amateurs”
Many more citizen scientists?

Towards a solution The European Distributed Institute of Taxonomy
A Network of Excellence (NoE)
29 leading European, North American,
& Russian natural history collections-based
institutions
Circa 12M €, funded under EU FP6
March 2006 - February 2011
14 Products…
Funding
Training & outreach
Websites
Integrated scientific activities
Inventories
Computer tools

ViBRANT Building on the computer tools of EDIT “ To set up the means, tools and infrastructure to produce a more rational and a more effective framework for European Biodiversity research” 14 Connecting people… ViBRANT connects people studying biodiversity regardless of their location. Each community website ( Scratchpad ) contains tools and services that enable users to study biodiversity in all its different facets. Connecting data… Information about biodiversity is scattered in a myriad of different places. ViBRANT helps defragment this information providing a window on the natural world that can be filtered according to users needs. Connecting science… ViBRANT bridges the gap between the producers & consumers of taxonomic information, providing the tools to help explain & predict the distribution of life on Earth.

ViBRANT Products
A Virtual Research Environment ( Scratchpads ) where users can safely store, share and manage their research information.
Analytical services for users to build identification keys and phylogenetic trees.
A publication platform for users to automatically compile taxonomic manuscripts from their research database.
A portal for users to centrally access publicly accessible biodiversity research information and literature.
Training & support , helping research communities to use these tools and services.
A standards compliant technical architecture that can be sustained by biodiversity research community.
The highlights 14

Users & logistics
Starts December 2010 (36 months)
Project website ( http://vbrant.eu )
Virtual Research Communities, CP-CSA, EU FP7
€ 6.2M Euros (EU Contribution €4.75M)
17 Partners in 9 countries, 603 person months
User communities
Anyone with an interest in biodiversity (research to citizen scientists)
Supporting taxonomic regional and thematic communities
Facilitate eBooks, eJournals, Conservation assessments, flora & faunal studies, data collection, community vocabularies, citizen science projects
Success measured through user engagement
Logistics 14

ViBRANT Partners
The Natural History Museum, London (NHM)
- Scratchpad VRE development & management
Hellenic Center for Marine Research, Crete (HCMR)
- Extension into ecol.,con. & citizen science, esp. marine biodiversity
Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences (RBINS)
- Training, outreach & community support
Oxford e-Research Centre (UOXF.E9)
- Mol. ID tools, services and data analysis
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU)
- User studies (sociological studies of user practices)
Julius Kühn-Institute (JKI)
- Data integration via controlled vocabularies & ontologies
Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin (MFN)
- Biodiversity inventorying & monitoring (mobile devices)
University of Amsterdam (UvA)
- Standards development (PESI)
The Open University (OU)
- Data mining and bibliographies (BHL)
Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT)
- Document Markup & natural language text processing
Vizzuality (Vizz)
- Data visualisation & analysis (data layers)
Pensoft Publishers (PENSOFT)
- Push-button manuscript submission from the Scratchpad VRE
Université Pierre et Marie Curie-Paris 6 (UPMC)
- Morphological identification keys and services (Xper 2 )
Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF)
- Controlled vocab. dev. & userbase expansion via GBIF nodes
Freie Universität Berlin (BGBM)
- Data aggregation portal via CDM
Université de la R é union (UdlR)
- Mathematics & HCI of taxonomic identification keys
University of Trieste
- Key2Nature integration & outreach
17 partners in 9 countries (universities, museums, research centres, SMEs) 14

International aspects
LifeWatch - prototype service centre ( http://lifewatch.eu )
ELIXIR - taxonomic metadata services ( http://elixir-europe.eu )
EMBRC - supporting marine model organism research ( http://embrc.eu )
ESFRI collaboration… Global collaboration…
GBIF - controlled vocabularies, nodes & observational data recording
PESI, 4D4Life & related EU projects
Encyclopedia of Life, Barcode of Life & Biodiversity Heritage Library
South African National Biodiversity Institute & Atlas of living Australia
14

Project plan The “chromosome” 14 SERVICE WP5. Data WP6. Publishing WP4. Standards WP8. Mobalisation RESEARCH WP2. Architecture WP7. Literature NETWORKING WP3. Training

Scratchpads Community focal point Scratchpads Virtual Research Environment http://scratchpad.eu 160+ research communities 14 N S R

Scratchpads Overview
Hosted websites for taxonomists
Research & publication platform
Modular (Drupal) & flexible
Supports the taxonomic workflow
Bottom-up design, agile dev.
Ecosystem of communities (150+)
2,000+ users (unpaid) from 2007
14 N S R

Scratchpads ViBRANT’s hub 14 N S R
Taxonomic, regional & thematic communities
Electronic books
Electronic journals
Conservation priorities
Biodiversity assessment
Citizen science
Controlled data

Become involved
Start a Scratchpad for your community ( http://scratchpads.eu/apply )
Register to join an existing Scratchpad community ( http://scratchpads.eu/siteslist )
Attend a training course, or apply for one to come to your community ( http://scratchpads.eu/training )
Access data - COMING SOON ( http://scratchpads.eu/progress )
Become a part of the software development team ( http://scratchpads.eu/develop & http://vbrant.eu/jobs )
20-21 January 2011, Grande Galerie de I’Evolution, Muséum national d’histoire naturelle
Further details to follow ( http://vbrant.eu/ )
Opening conference… 14

ViBRANT—Virtual Biodiversity Research and Access Network for Taxonomy

by Vincent Smith on Jul 22, 2011

Accessibility

Categories

Upload Details

Usage Rights

1 Embed 1

Statistics

ViBRANT—Virtual Biodiversity Research and Access Network for Taxonomy Presentation Transcript