GLOBAL BIODIVERSITY INFORMATION FACILITY David Remsen ECAT Program Officer August G Informatics Infrastructure and Portal (IIP)

Contents Publishing – Current developments in DarwinCore, its extension, and publishing solutions (incl. the Integrated Publishing Toolkit) Integration and discovery – Status of tools for the harvesting, interpretation through controlled vocabularies and plans for the Data Portal Communications – Evaluation of the communication platforms, update on staffing changes and resources

Informatics Overview

Publishing Objectives – Simplify the publication of primary biodiv. data – Support the publication of species-level data – Improve data quality & dataset documentation – Reduce the latency between publishing and discovery through portals – Support the capacity to extend the published content – Expand data publishing configuration options

Publishing What Species Occurrence Data – Primary Biodiversity Data – Observations / Nat. Hist. Collections Species-level Data – Taxonomic Catalogues – Annotated Species Checklists Floral and Faunal lists Thematically-defined lists (Red-List, Invasive, etc.) Dataset (Resource) Metadata

Standards and Protocols Primary Biodiversity data – Darwin Core via DiGIR protocol – ABCD (Access to Biological Collections Data) via BioCase protocol – TAPIR protocol– multiple output formats Taxonomic data – Taxon Concept Schema (TCS) Few tools Low uptake Protocols impact harvesting latency – Schemas are complex and constrain data scope

Darwin Core Ratified in 2009 Significant additions/refinements Set of terms – Expressed via XML Simple Darwin Core (Subset) Express as Text – x.htm x.htm

Darwin Core Archives (DwC-A)

Extensions are text files

DwC-A Case Study: Ireland National Biodiversity Data Centre (Ireland) Ireland joined GBIF in 2009 Selected DwC-A as the easiest integration Incorporated into internal systems – Under 2 weeks of development Automatic registration through RegistryAPI – Collections today 450,000 records harvested

Publish via: Direct Export of DwC-A Requires basic DBA skills and documentation – Darwin Core Terms – Darwin Core Archive Format – Publishing Taxonomic Catalogues & Annotated Checklists via DwC-A – Publishing Occurrence Data via DwC-A Access to list of terms, supported extensions, and schemas – (Schema repository) Status: Documentation release September 2010 via GBIF website

XML Descriptor file <archive xmlns=" xmlns:xsi=" xsi:schemaLocation= metadata=” taxa.txt vernacular.txt

Authoring meta.xml Status: Beta release Sept. 1

Excel Spreadsheet Templates Status: Beta release September (by TDWG)

Excel Spreadsheet Templates

Integrated Publishing Toolkit A supported platform for publication of: – Occurrence-level content – Species checklist content – Dataset metadata Sampling methods Bibliographic citations Temporal coverage DwC-A compatible – Reduced latency between publishing and discovery

Integrated Publishing Toolkit GBIF Review 2009 “…with regards to software and tool development…: – Lack of rigorous technical documentation; open source software must be documented and annotated meticulously in order to take advantage of improvements made by users. – Release of unstable code that is being worked on still by its initiators to a community who are not made aware that it is not finalised.”

Integrated Publishing Toolkit Received good feedback in first year of use Primary request: Simplify and “lighten” up the product RC4 testing initiating now – Enhanced metadata (still EML) – Darwin Core Archive import – Multiple organisation association (for hosting centres) – Bug fixing

Integrated Publishing Toolkit RC4 will not address feedback, but will be a more stable version for new users RC5 development underway to address feedback – Simplification all around (intuitiveness) – Performance improvements – Enriched documentation/examples/webcasts – Server requirements dropping significantly (target of 256MB of memory)

Integrated Publishing Toolkit Following RC5, we will initiate user testing and bug fixing, with no unnecessary functionality changes to move to the target of a stable robust platform by end

Vocabulary server Drupal implementation developed as a proof of concept – IPT uses extensions, vocabularies and schemas for the operation – No well defined workflows yet for community ownership of vocabularies – Discuss at TDWG ’10 – ViBRANT Funding to operationalise

Vocabulary server Draft New Extensions Draft New Vocabularies Publish them Internationalise them

Indexing and Discovery Objectives – Extend the classes of content that can be discovered – Improve the means to discover (flexible indexes) – Better determination of fitness for use Through dataset metadata – Annotation / Feedback brokerage – Accurate citation – Reduce the latency between publishing and discovery through portals

GBIF Registry (GBRDS) Index of the technical access points of the datasets comprising the GBIF network Captures basic metadata about institutions, datasets, nodes and their relationships Enhanced features under development – Improved attribution – Better data provenance declaration – More accurate reporting on the total participation within the GBIF network – Dynamic definitions of thematic networks – API / Web app for automating registration

GBIF Registry (GBRDS)

Registry: GBIF is complex…

Metadata catalogue Collection of XML-based dataset metadata documents (ISO, FGDC, EML, DIV formats) Associated with entities known to the GBIF Registry Common search across content Currently using Metacat – Will review this following prototyping Goal: Enriched documentation, discovery of unpublished datasets Status: Under development, promoting publication of data documents through “small grant awards”

Harvesting and Indexing Toolkit The GBIF harvesting software: – Foundations to harvest DiGIR, BioCASe, TAPIR, DwC-A – Synchronisation with the GBIF Registry – User interface for controlling and scheduling harvesting operations – Metrics for the success of harvest runs – Access to logs for diagnostics – Sychronisation against the GBIF Portal database

Harvesting and Indexing Toolkit

In production use in GBIFS only Some external users are testing – collecting feedback now In light of the GBIF review comments, need to assess: – The need for such a tool – requirements are sought by community – Resources needed to meet expectation by community (versioning, bug fixing, support, manuals) Is it rather a library to aid developers than a product per-say? Remember a homogenous network does not require multi protocol support and can be handled far more simply!

Data Portal – Little functional development in recent months Bug fixing activities only – Continues to grow in content Jan 2010: 196 million Aug 2010: 203 million – 2500 – 3000 visitors per day (plus web service use) – US visitors account approx 22% (2010 traffic) 2 nd is UK visitors at 5%

Data Portal Evolutions Portal will evolve by end 2011 – Improved taxonomic services and content Achieved through the Global Names Architecture – Improved attribution and provenance Achieve by enhancing the Registry – Improved occurrence indexing Scalable solution, richer fields, reduced latency… etc – Improved map visualisations – Custom information feeds Abstracts, repatriation, records modified – Improved dataset metadata Determining fitness for use

Portal evolution CurrentlyRoadmap Limited to 250,000 records for download Access to unlimited volume of export formats 23 Darwin core properties available for search Ability to support multiple indexes (Common, marine, terrestrial Plantae etc) 30 fields available on record detailFull record detail visible Limited ability to determine fitness for use Improved access to metadata where available. Improvements in automated determination of fitness for use (spatial resolution) Poor understanding of the basis of record Improvements in determining point versus grid based content, ex situ versus in situ records etc. Limited spatial searchProvide means to access content through user defined polygons Occurrence content

Portal evolution CurrentlyRoadmap Synthesised taxonomy assembled from all content Multiple taxonomic organisation Assembly methods of synthesised taxonomy poorly documented Rigorous documentation for taxonomic organisation Common name search limitedMany names sources used to enable common name search Limited comparison between taxonomies Services to enable taxonomic comparison (overlap and contradiction) Limited services for external integrationImproved APIs for connecting external systems Few checklist sources included (4-5?) in current data portal 100s of checklists accessible NOW in Dev Version – integrated into new Data Portal Taxonomic content and organisation

Portal evolution CurrentlyRoadmap Metadata limited to contact informationAbility to use rich dataset metadata where available Only datasets with digitised records discoverable Datasets described through metadata discoverable Attribution of data limited to provider and dataset Better attribution of all parties involved in data publication Citation in data exported limited to datasets only Prototype citation services Feedback delivered on a per record basis by Annotation brokerage services Metadata, attribution and feedback

Checklist Bank Slide Status: Dev In-use by ALA

Data Portal Evolution The Portal is more than just a discovery system. The Portal will be a hub that allows: a)Data custodians to – Register the existence of biodiversity data sources – Publish their content and in addition, rich information about the content (e.g. metadata documenting assembly methods) – Subscribe to annotations made against their content – Subscribe to information about the usage of their content – Access services of interest to them (e.g. quality control)

Data Portal Evolution b)Users to – Search content in real time, through various customised search options (e.g. Terrestrial plants, marine mammals, natural history collections, protected areas) – Browse content taxonomically, temporally, geographically etc. – Define and run reports (not real time) to extract a data subset or derive metrics – Subscribe to customised information feeds (e.g. Modified Pinaceae specimens in Australia) – Publish annotations related to record quality, or assertions about that record (e.g. confirmed suitable for 100km modeling) – Build better information systems that utilise services offered by the Portal

Nodes Portal Toolkit Customise-able toolkit to deploy of a National/Regional/Thematic discovery portal Technical advisory group for NPT recommend that: – To fully engage the NODES community in the design, development, testing and deployment of the NPT. – To ensure tight integration of the NPT with the GBIF Informatics Infrastructure, while taking benefit from a wide array of additional biodiversity-related web services. – To adopt an open source content management platform such as Drupal, upon which to build and develop specific NPT modules (specifically those for integration, visualisation, and access of biodiversity- related data and information) A call for an NPT coordinator is currently in draft ViBRANT funds will support

Communications Participant forums 13 August Launch

Communications Consolidate tech docs RSS Feeds More updates

Secretariat Tech Capacity Resources – 3 current openings Java Developers – Vocabularies/Ontology Developer (30 months) –ViBRANT – Taxonomic Publishing Developer (18 months) – i4Life / Catalogue of Life

Summary: Informatics Targets Data custodians Registry Harvesters Processing Indexes APIs (user / machine) Clients Data flow Point based occurrences Grid based occurrences Checklists Dataset Metadata Refined end to end workflows for: