OpenObs: Living Atlases platform for French biodiversity data

The OpenObs project, led by Patrinat, was launched in September 2017, and the first version of this tool was released in October 2020. OpenObs is based on the Atlas of Living Australia platform, supported by the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) community, particularly the Living Atlases (LA) collective.OpenObs enables the visualization and downloading of observation data on species available in the National Inventory of Natural Heritage (INPN), the national platform of SINP (Information System for the Inventory of Natural Heritage). It provides open access to non-sensitive public data and includes all available observations, whether they are occurrence or synthesis data.As of July 2023, OpenObs has 134,922,015 observation records, and new data is reguarly added (at least twice a year). Furthermore, the project is constantly evolving with new developments planned, such as a user validation interface and new cartographic tools.We will present the architecture of this LA-based national biodiversity portal (Fig. 1), as well as its planned new functionality and development roadmap

Regional Data Platform of West and Central African Herbaria

In April 2021, a Biodiversity Information for Development (BID) project was launched to deliver a regional data platform of West and Central African herbaria, which just concluded in April 2023. A dataset containing 168,545 herbarium specimens from 6 different countries: Togo, Gabon, Ivory Coast, Benin, Guinea Conakry and Cameroon, is now visible on the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) website and will be regularly updated. A checklist datatset (Radji 2023a) and an occurrence dataset (Radji 2023b) obtained from herbarium parts are also available on GBIF.In addition, a Living Atlases portal for herbaria in West and Central Africa has been created to allow users to search, display, filter, and download these data. This application reuses open source modules developed by the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA) community (Morin et al. 2021).In addition to that, the RIHA platform (Réseau Informatique des Herbiers d'Afrique / Digital Network of African Herbaria) enables herbarium administrators to manage their own data. Thanks to all these tools, the workflow (Fig. 1) for data publication on GBIF is carried out regularly and easily and the addition of new member herbaria from West and Central Africa can be easily incorporated

Connecting West and Central African Herbaria Data: A new Living Atlases regional data platform

International audienceThe label transcription and imaging of specimens in key African herbaria has been ongoing since the early 2000s. Many collections in Benin, Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Gabon, Guinea Conakry, and Togo are now fully transcribed and partially digitized. More than 200 000 transcribed specimens are available with the following distribution

French Biodiversity Data Hub: Linking local to global biodiversity through international initiatives and open science clouds

The French national biodiversity data hub (“Pôle National de Données de Biodiversité” - PNDB) is a national e-infrastructure created in 2018 and led by the National Museum of Natural History, contributing to the Open Science policy of the Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation (MESRI).PNDB contributes to building an integrative framework taking into account biodiversity over the long term (from the origins of life to future models), at all biological scales (from the molecule to the socio-ecosystem), and in all its interactions, by providing tools and services for the description, access, validation, analysis and reuse of biodiversity data.With the diversity and complementary type of research biodiversity data (information systems, institutional data repositories, research infrastructures as observatories, experimental devices, natural history collections, etc.), but also from public policy data, the missions of the PNDB are deeply based on the FAIR approach (making data Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable).Thanks to its nomination in 2022 as a thematic reference center of the MESRI, PNDB will contribute to promoting the FAIR approach, will increase the skills (e.g., by training, good practices) of the scientific communities around open science, and stimulate interactions between producers and users of biodiversity data.PNDB has led the French participation to GEO BON (Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network) since 2018 and recently shared the lead with public policies information system coordination. Thanks to this co-lead, this national BON proposes an innovative coordination of all biodiversity monitoring programs, from expertise to research around an innovative Essential Biodiversity Variable (EBV) operationalization pilot. This pilot is made of open practical solutions providing a particular high degree of FAIRNess of biodiversity research objects, from data to source codes. PNDB is also a major European point of contact for the DataOne network, who, in combination with the strong link between PNDB and French Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) node colleagues, allows the dissemination of all types of data through the world in the best manner