The New GBIF Data Portal Web Services and Tools Donald Hobern GBIF Deputy Director for Informatics October 2006

Background

Current GBIF data portal (prototype) released in February 2004 Fixes and enhancements by Secretariat, CRIA (Brazil) and CBIT (Australia) Mapping services from BeBIF (Belgium) and CBIF (Canada), including Google Earth support Mirror sites in Germany and Korea Function very limited –Taxonomic navigation using Catalogue of Life data –Integration of data from DiGIR-Darwin Core and BioCASe-ABCD data providers –Search and download only by single species –(Almost) no web services Background and history

Team based in Copenhagen throughout 2006 –Three Java developers –Data portal administrator Complete redevelopment of portal –Improved registration of data resources – richer metadata –New, more flexible approach to indexing data resources –Validation of data content performed as part of indexing –User interface redeveloped to address user needs –User interface components available for embedding in other portals –Web services to support other portals and applications –Platform to support community development of tools and extensions Three online surveys –User requirements and expectations (April 2006) –Data provider requirements and expectations (May 2006) –Technical approaches (September 2006) Review workshop involving representatives from Nodes (14-15/09/2006) Launching beta programme (new server being installed in Copenhagen) New portal development

Home Quick Search Explore Species Explore Countries Explore Datasets Species Page Country Page Dataset Page Explore Occurrences

Tools: Quick Search

Tools: Explore Species/Countries/Datasets … and other taxa/other regions/institutions/networks

Tools: Summary Pages

Tools: Explore Occurrences

Other matters

Broader range of supported import formats and protocols –Occurrence data Darwin Core (original 1.2, MaNIS, OBIS, new 2.0 with extensions) ABCD (1.20, 2.06) –Taxonomic data Catalogue of Life CD-ROM (moving to dynamic checklist when appropriate) Nomenclators via tab-delimited lists of LSIDs (work under way) Data from ECAT projects (models and tools under way) –Other resources Discussions under way with other resources (GenBank, BOLD, ARKive) General support for handling XML and tab-delimited formats Validation and annotation of data during indexing –Is country name recognisable? –Is record georeferenced? –Are coordinates and country names consistent? –Is locality consistent with the declared geographic scope of the dataset? –Is date present and interpretable? –Can scientific name be parsed? –Is scientific name recognisable? –Is identification consistent with the declared taxonomic scope of the dataset? –Is the basis of record (specimen, observation, etc.) clear? Clear separation between “raw” and “processed” index data –Scientific name string versus interpreted taxon –Country name string versus interpreted country –etc. Indexing

SOAP and REST (URL-based key-value pair) web services ready for test Two versions: –Less complete, but more data – from current data portal: –More complete, but less data – from beta data portal: Search one or all taxonomic resources for taxa with a (partial or complete) scientific name –Basic response –Taxon Concept Schema response –SPICE + TCS? Search for occurrences for a taxon with filters for country, bounding box, time period, data resource, etc. –Basic response –Darwin Core response –TAPIR and WFS planned Services to list provider countries, providers by country, and data resources by provider Web services

Test site currently at Official launch of beta programme in next few weeks –Will include specific requests to review different functions as they are made available Test web service interfaces –Contact me for information on how to connect and use these Early in 2007, we will start testing how to embed portions of the interface in other portals (national, thematic, etc.) Interested to know of any institutions who may be able to host a mirror site and perhaps develop additional interfaces over the data or additional processed fields in the index Develop visualisation or analysis tools Getting involved

Contact Global Biodiversity Information Facility Donald Hobern, GBIF Deputy Directory for Informatics, - Communications Portalhttp:// - Prototype Data Portalhttp:// - Test version of new Data Portalhttp://newportal.gbif.org/portal/ Development team: Andrea Hahn, Ali Kalufya, Giorgos Ksouris, Dave Martin, Tim Robertson, Ciprian Vizitiu (GBIF) Damian Barnier (CBIT) None of this would be possible without the work of: TDWG subgroups in developing relevant standards and protocols All participant organisations within the GBIF network in sharing data