DiSSCo Prepare Project: Increasing the Implementation Readiness Levels of the European Research Infrastructure

The Distributed System of Scientific Collections (DiSSCo) is a new world-class Research Infrastructure (RI) for Natural Science Collections. The DiSSCo RI aims to create a new business model for one European collection that digitally unifies all European natural science assets under common access, curation, policies and practices that ensure that all the data is easily Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR principles). DiSSCo represents the largest ever formal agreement between natural history museums, botanic gardens and collection-holding institutions in the world.DiSSCo entered the European Roadmap for Research Infrastructures in 2018 and launched its main preparatory phase project (DiSSCo Prepare) in 2020. DiSSCo Prepare is the primary vehicle through which DiSSCo reaches the overall maturity necessary for its construction and eventual operation. DiSSCo Prepare raises DiSSCo’s implementation readiness level (IRL) across the five dimensions: technical, scientific, data, organisational and financial. Each dimension of implementation readiness is separately addressed by specific Work Packages (WP) with distinct targets, actions and tasks that will deliver DiSSCo’s Construction Masterplan. This comprehensive and integrated Masterplan will be the product of the outputs of all of its content related tasks and will be the project’s final output. It will serve as the blueprint for construction of the DiSSCo RI, including establishing it as a legal entity.DiSSCo Prepare builds on the successful completion of DiSSCo’s design study, ICEDIG and the outcomes of other DiSSCo-linked projects such as SYNTHESYS+ and MOBILISE.This paper is an abridged version of the original DiSSCo Prepare grant proposal. It contains the overarching scientific case for DiSSCo Prepare, alongside a description of our major activities

Community engagement: The ‘last mile’ challenge for European research e-infrastructures

Europe is building its Open Science Cloud; a set of robust and interoperable e-infrastructures with the capacity to provide data and computational solutions through cloud-based services. The development and sustainable operation of such e-infrastructures are at the forefront of European funding priorities. The research community, however, is still reluctant to engage at the scale required to signal a Europe-wide change in the mode of operation of scientific practices. The striking differences in uptake rates between researchers from different scientific domains indicate that communities do not equally share the benefits of the above European investments. We highlight the need to support research communities in organically engaging with the European Open Science Cloud through the development of trustworthy and interoperable Virtual Research Environments. These domain-specific solutions can support communities in gradually bridging technical and socio-cultural gaps between traditional and open digital science practice, better diffusing the benefits of European e-infrastructures

Unifying European Biodiversity Informatics (BioUnify)

In order to preserve the variety of life on Earth, we must understand it better. Biodiversity research is at a pivotal point with research projects generating data at an ever increasing rate. Structuring, aggregating, linking and processing these data in a meaningful way is a major challenge. The systematic application of information management and engineering technologies in the study of biodiversity (biodiversity informatics) help transform data to knowledge. However, concerted action is required to be taken by existing e-infrastructures to develop and adopt common standards, provisions for interoperability and avoid overlapping in functionality. This would result in the unification of the currently fragmented landscape that restricts European biodiversity research from reaching its full potential. The overarching goal of this COST Action is to coordinate existing research and capacity building efforts, through a bottom-up trans-disciplinary approach, by unifying biodiversity informatics communities across Europe in order to support the long-term vision of modelling biodiversity on earth. BioUnify will: 1. specify technical requirements, evaluate and improve models for efficient data and workflow storage, sharing and re-use, within and between different biodiversity communities; 2. mobilise taxonomic, ecological, genomic and biomonitoring data generated and curated by natural history collections, research networks and remote sensing sources in Europe; 3. leverage results of ongoing biodiversity informatics projects by identifying and developing functional synergies on individual, group and project level; 4. raise technical awareness and transfer skills between biodiversity researchers and information technologists; 5. formulate a viable roadmap for achieving the long-term goals for European biodiversity informatics, which ensures alignment with global activities and translates into efficient biodiversity policy

Facilitating biodiversity science through Virtual Research Environments

<p>This talk was delivered during the Canadian Biodiversity Science and Information workshop on 19 Feb 2015.</p

Introduction to Biodiversity Informatics

<p>A brief introduction to the concept, vision and challenges associated with Biodiversity Informatics.</p

Associating Occurrences with Genes, Phenotypes, and Environments through the Distributed System of Scientific Collections (DiSSCo)

Over the last few decades, the research practice in natural sciences has changed dramatically. Remote sensing, rapid identification and molecular approaches allow us to efficiently monitor the changing world around us and understand the cause of those changes. Advances of digital, genomic and information technologies enable natural science collections to provide novel discoveries and ask for new collection types and attributes, while fostering the development of innovative approaches to face the urgent societal challenges. Natural Science Collections (three billion specimens globally) represent an unparalleled scientific asset. They constitute a unique source of diverse data classes, including genomic, chemical, morphological and geo-spatial information. Despite existing successful examples of infrastructures, aggregating and publishing specific data classes (such as the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, GenBank or the Encyclopedia of Life - TraitBank), the landscape remains fragmented with limited capacity to bring together this information in a systematic and robust manner. The Distributed System of Scientific Collections (DiSSCo) represents a pan-European initiative, and the largest ever agreement of natural science museums, to jointly address the fragmentation of European collections. DiSSCo is set to unify European natural science collections into a coherent new research infrastructure, able to provide bio- and geo-diversity data at the scale, form and precision required by a multi-disciplinary user base. At the heart of the technical implementation of DiSSCo, is the development of a cloud-based non-relational data store that links occurrence, genomic, chemical and trait data classes, by robustly and unambiguously anchoring each data object back to the physical object. By harmonising digitisation, curation and publication processes and workflows, across all its nodes, DiSSCo can populate and serve a knowledge graph for European natural science collections.    In this paper we will introduce the vision, mission and objectives of DiSSCo, discuss the technical approach and touch upon the socio-cultural and governance aspects supporting this large-scale European endeavour. DiSSCo is applying for inclusion in the 2018 European roadmap for research infrastructures, through an evaluation process organised by the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI). This process is politically and/or financially supported by 12 European countries and an expanding network of 95 natural science museums in 20 countries

Online tools and standards for Biodiversity Data in the Semantic web

<p>This presentation was used as an introduction of Postgraduate students to standards and online tools for entering, managing and re-using biodiversity data</p

Linking layers of biodiversity data: Informatics challenges for the long tail research

<p>This presentation was given during the 3rd RDA plenary and the Long Tail INterest Group session in Amsterdam in September 2014.</p

Biodiversity literature mark-up: Compelling use cases for Natural History Collections

<p>This paper describes compelling use cases of literature mark-up activities in assisting specimen label transcription and in measuring the scientific impact of natural history collections.</p

Novel Services in DiSSCo: The Research Infrastructure for Europe’s Natural Science Collections

DiSSCo, a Distributed System of Scientific Collections, is a Research Infrastructure (RI) with 114 self-sustaining partners in Europe aiming at providing physical and digital (data) access to the approximately 1.5 billion biological and geological specimens in collections distributed across Europe. It is a facility to generate and aggregate data derived from the collections and repackage them as linked data objects with unified access to enable science and underpin FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) data principles. In the European landscape of environmental Research Infrastructures, the effectiveness of services that aim at aggregating, monitoring, analysing and modelling geo-diversity information relies on the primary description of the bio- and geo- diversity. It also relies on the availability of this primary reference data that today is scattered and disconnected. DiSSCo provides the required bio-geographical, taxonomic and species trait data at the level of precision and accuracy required to enable and speed up research towards achieving the Targets of the Sustainable Development Goals for Life on Earth, Life below Water and Climate Action. DiSSCo requires further development of TDWG standards, RDA (Research Data Alliance) recommendations, practices developed in the CETAF, Consortium of European Taxonomic Facilities network and novel technological approaches to deliver data at the economies of scale and scope needed. In this paper, we: discuss technical barriers for interoperability and possible action lines to overcome these including practices and technologies to underpin the FAIR data principles; outline the DiSSCo API (Application Programming Interface) services to provide data suitable for thematic services in environmental Research Infrastructures like LifeWatch, eLTER (European Long-Term Ecosystem and socio-ecological Research Infrastructure) as well as RIs in other domains such as E-RIHS (European Research Infrastructure for Heritage Science) in the field of social sciences. The services enable better connections between collection data and observations in biodiversity observation networks, such as EUBON (European Biodiversity Observation Network) and GEOBON (Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network); explain the DiSSCo strategy to align project outcomes and standards development towards a common unified research infrastructure