ViBRANT (Virtual Biodiversity Research and Access Network for Taxonomy) is a project that aims to create a more effective framework for European biodiversity research. It will connect people studying biodiversity through shared research platforms, connect scattered biodiversity data, and connect the producers and consumers of taxonomic information. The project is led by 17 partners across 9 countries and will develop e-infrastructure products like virtual research environments and analytical/publishing tools to help users store, share, analyze and publish their data and research. Success will be measured by user engagement with the tools and services as well as traditional research metrics and the degree to which the tools and approaches are taken up within and outside the consortium.

1. ViBRANT
Virtual Biodiversity
ViBRANT
Virtual Biodiversity
Virtual Biodiversity Research and
Access Network for Taxonomy:
Project Overview
Vince Smith
Natural History Museum, London
vince@vsmith.info

2. ViBRANT
Virtual Biodiversity
Outline
• Some background / why ViBRANT?
• Goals / what makes ViBRANT different
• What ViBRANT will do
• Logistics & collaboration
• Measures of success
• Longer term vision
ViBRANT
Virtual Biodiversity
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3. ViBRANT
Virtual Biodiversity
Outline
• Some background / why ViBRANT?
• Goals / what makes ViBRANT different
• What ViBRANT will do
• Logistics & collaboration
• Measures of success
• Longer term vision
ViBRANT
Virtual Biodiversity
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4. ViBRANT
Virtual Biodiversity
Our problem
The challenge of 21st Century taxonomy
Goal…
• Inventory the Earth’s species
• Document their relationships
• “Publish” & apply these data
Data set…
• 1.8 M described spp. (10M names)
• 300M pages (over last 250 years)
• 1.5-3B specimens
People…
• 4-8,000 taxonomists
• 30-40,000 “pro-amateurs”
• Many more citizen scientists?
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5. ViBRANT
Virtual Biodiversity
A solution
The transformative role of the internet & the World Wide Web
You are
here
• Built of links
The 1st Internet
• 1 trillion pages
4-node ARPAnet - 1969 • 2 billion users
from Hobbes’ Internet timeline (http://bit.ly/dtBJ2i)
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6. ViBRANT
Virtual Biodiversity
The web applied to taxonomy
Biodiversity informatics
TDWG Projects
Database
663 projects
(Jan. 2011)
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7. ViBRANT
Virtual Biodiversity
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
Products…
• Funding
• Training & outreach
• Websites
• Integrated scientific activities
• Inventories
• Computer tools
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8. ViBRANT
Virtual Biodiversity
Scratchpads
http://scratchpads.eu
• Hosted websites for taxonomists
• Research & publication platform
• Modular (Drupal) & flexible
• Supports the taxonomic workflow
• 2,500 users (unpaid) from 2007
• Ecosystem of communities (~200)
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9. ViBRANT
Virtual Biodiversity
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10. ViBRANT
Virtual Biodiversity
Outline
• Some background / why ViBRANT?
• Goals / what makes ViBRANT different
• What ViBRANT will do
• Logistics & collaboration
• Measures of success
• Longer term vision
ViBRANT
Virtual Biodiversity
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11. ViBRANT
Virtual Biodiversity
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12. ViBRANT
Virtual Biodiversity
Goals of ViBRANT
To set up the means, tools and infrastructure to produce a more rational
and a more effective framework for European Biodiversity research.
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.
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13. ViBRANT
Virtual Biodiversity
What we will do
E-Infrastructure products
• A Virtual Research Environment (Scratchpads) where users can safely store,
share and manage data.
• Analytical services for users to build identification keys and phylogenetic trees.
• A publication platform for users to automatically compile manuscripts from their
research database.
• A portal for users the best Virtual Research Environment
Creating to centrally access publicly accessible biodiversity research
information and literature. & systematic research community
for the taxonomic
• Training, support & sociological study, helping research communities to use
these tools and services.
• A standards compliant technical architecture that can be sustained by
biodiversity research community.
ViBRANT is primarily a tool, secondarily a data provider
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14. ViBRANT
Virtual Biodiversity
Who is doing it
• 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 (Xper2)
• 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 Réunion (UdlR)
- Mathematics & HCI of taxonomic identification keys
17 partners in 9 countries
• University of Trieste (universities, museums & SMEs)
- Key2Nature integration & outreach
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15. ViBRANT
Virtual Biodiversity
What makes ViBRANT different
Its (mostly) not research
ViBRANT is primarily about tools & services
Its is about audiences
ViBRANT is driven by its users (old & new)
Our work program is flexible
Re-writing our deliverables is one of the deliverables!
ViBRANT is agile
The perpetual beta - like taxonomy
ViBRANT is sustainable
We do things simply & cheaply, such that we can maintain them
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16. ViBRANT
Virtual Biodiversity
Outline
• Some background / why ViBRANT
• Goals / what makes ViBRANT different
• What ViBRANT will do
• Logistics & collaboration
• Measures of success
• Longer term vision
ViBRANT
Virtual Biodiversity
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ViBRANT
Virtual Biodiversity
Macro Organisation (CP-CSA)
• WP1. (435,125 €) Management, coordination & administration (7 partners)
Networking Activities (1,805,885 €)
• WP3. (683,242 €) Training, outreach & community support (4)
• WP4. (713,784 €) Standardisation (5)
• WP8. (408,859 €) Ecological and conservation data mobilization (5)
Service Activities (1,025,578 €)
• WP5. (755,913 €) Interaction and data services (5)
• WP6. (269,665 €) Scholarly Publishing (2)
Research Activities (1,483,411 €)
• WP2. (858,495 €) Technical architecture (2)
• WP7. (624,916 €) Biodiversity literature data access & data mining (4)
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18. ViBRANT
Virtual Biodiversity
ViBRANT Project plan
The “chromosome”
NETWORKING WP4. Standards
WP3. Training WP8. Mobilisation
SERVICE RESEARCH
WP5. Data WP2. Architecture
WP6. Publishing WP7. Literature
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19. ViBRANT
Virtual Biodiversity
Outline
• Some background / why ViBRANT
• Goals / what makes ViBRANT different
• What ViBRANT will do
• Logistics & collaboration
• Measures of success
• Longer term vision
ViBRANT
Virtual Biodiversity
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20. ViBRANT
Virtual Biodiversity
ViBRANT logistics
• Started 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
Collaboration (not just EU)…
• ESFRI Projects: LifeWatch, ELIXIR & EMBRC
• 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
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21. ViBRANT
Virtual Biodiversity
Outline
• Some background / why ViBRANT
• Goals / what makes ViBRANT different
• What ViBRANT will do
• Logistics & collaboration
• Measures of success
• Longer term vision
ViBRANT
Virtual Biodiversity
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22. ViBRANT
Virtual Biodiversity
Short term success metrics
User engagement as a measure of success*
Networking (tools and collaboration)
• How many people are using our tools
• How deep is their engagement with these tools
• How are these tools changing what they would otherwise do
Services (data & processing data)
• How much internal data is being called from outside the system
• How much external data is being called from inside the system
• How much are our services being used to add value
Research (discovery of new information or approaches)
• Traditional academic metrics (publications, presentations, blogs etc)
• Uptake within ViBRANT & outside the consortium
both quantitative & qualitative (WP3)*
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23. ViBRANT
Virtual Biodiversity
Longer term success metrics
Once ViBRANT project is over
Persistence & sustainability
• Maintaining what we do (perhaps without money)
• If its valued, it will endure
• Not everything will persist!
Finding new audiences
• ViBRANT is primarily about taxonomy & taxonomists
• Engage more people as “taxonomists” (e.g. citizen scientists)
• Reach out to other sectors e.g. conservation & ecology
Embed our products outside the consortium
• Take up by other initiatives, especially outside the EU
• E.g. LifeWatch service centre, GBIF Nodes, publishers, CBoL, EoL
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24. ViBRANT
Virtual Biodiversity
Outline
• Some background / why ViBRANT
• Goals / what makes ViBRANT different
• What ViBRANT will do
• Logistics & collaboration
• Measures of success
• Longer term vision
ViBRANT
Virtual Biodiversity
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25. ViBRANT
Virtual Biodiversity
(My) Longer term vision
Taxonomy’s three problems, & my view of how we fix them
Defragmenting our output
• Tools that support technical & social workflows of taxonomy
• Provide the means to (loosely) aggregate that content ViBRANT
Virtual Biodiversity
Speeding up out output
• Digitising collections
• Increasing our workforce (engaging non-professionals)
• Coordinated & standardised programs for new kinds of output
Improved labeling & findability
• Simple & persistent identifiers on defined concepts of everything
• Simplifying how we define (publish) concepts
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26. ViBRANT
Virtual Biodiversity
Where taxonomy is now
And where we might like to be…
You are
here
• Built of links
The 1st Internet
• 1 trillion pages
4-node ARPAnet - 1969 • 2 billion users
from Hobbes’ Internet timeline (http://bit.ly/dtBJ2i)
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27. ViBRANT
Virtual Biodiversity
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