TDWG – Looking Backward and Forward Donald Hobern, Director, Atlas of Living Australia 20 October 2008

TDWG – Looking backward Developing biodiversity information standards since 1985 Changing focus: Phase 1: Data models for institutional collections Developing shared understanding of the information domain Phase 2: Web-based data exchange (DiGIR, Darwin Core, etc.) Building dedicated networks for merging data Phase 3: Ontologies, flexible data integration Liberating biodiversity data for wider use TDWG currently still between phase 2 and phase 3 Important to retain benefits from earlier phases: Strong involvement from collection and biological community Focus on understanding and modelling the information domain Important to apply expertise to the modern web Models for reuse in many contexts Support for intelligent harvesting and integration of data

TDWG – Revitalise working groups Declining focus on working group meetings Formerly much more central to annual conference In meetings funded outside conference Conference now largely filled with presentations Less opportunity to develop standards Less opportunity to cross-fertilise ideas Proposals: Include working sessions back in main conference days Seek priorities from major projects and user groups What problems should TDWG address most urgently? Seek sponsors for TDWG Task Group meetings Co-brand standards activities with partners Urgent need for volunteers Active contributors to groups Chair for Technical Architecture Group Leaders for work on LSIDs and on ontology

TDWG – Separation of concerns TDWG based on linking biologists and software engineers In recent years focus on solving some IT issues: Overall architecture for biodiversity data Globally unique identifiers Change of focus from XML schema to RDF equivalents Risk of alienating biologists and other users All too technical Need to maintain balance and vitality Use architecture and ontology to separate concerns Biologists can model what data should be captured and exchanged Software engineers can apply these data models in different contexts Enable us all to contribute in our own areas of expertise TDWG should be the meeting place where this happens

TDWG – Simplifying recommendations TDWG has learned a lot in the last 10 years We have developed a series of versions of different standards DiGIR, BioCASe, TAPIR Darwin Core (several versions), ABCD, TaxonOccurrence vocabulary Taxon Concept Schema, TaxonName and TaxonConcept vocabularies Etc. Very confusing to users Often standards are superseded before they are even ratified Previous versions have not been deprecated Uncompleted move to the ontology and vocabularies See the ALA guidelines: Challenge: move to clear and consistent recommendations: 2009: complete the core ontology and vocabularies 2010: move to a single set of recommended standards

TDWG – Outreach to biologists and users TDWG still unknown to many potential user groups Challenge for all TDWG members Publicise TDWG standards where they are applicable Identify issues TDWG standards haven’t addressed Recommend topics for TDWG Conference in 2009 Use TDWG infrastructure resources Biodiversity Information Projects of the World Biodiversity Information Networks Database Biodiversity Information Events Database Interest Group and Task Group wikis Wonderful to see such a wide spread of attendees this year Work together to make TDWG standards solve real problems

An example - taxonomy tags

Thank you Donald Hobern Chair, Taxonomic Databases Working Group Director, Atlas of Living Australia Phone: (02) Web: