Content assessment of the primary biodiversity data published through GBIF network: Status, challenges and potentials

With the establishment of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) in 2001 as an inter-governmental co-ordinating body, concerted efforts were made during the past decade to establish a global research infrastructure to facilitate the sharing, discovery and access to primary biodiversity data. As on date the participants in GBIF have enabled the discovery and access to over 267+ million such data records. While this remarkable achievement in terms of volume of data must be acknowledged, concerns about the quality and ‘fitness-for-use’ of the data should also be carefully considered in future developments. This contribution is therefore a direct response to the calls for comprehensive content assessment of the GBIF mobilised data. It is the first comprehensive assessment of the coverage of the content mobilised so far through GBIF, as well as a mean to identify the existing gaps and reflect on fitness-for-use requirements. This paper describes the complementary methodologies adopted by the GBIF Secretariat and University of Navarra for the development of a comprehensive content assessment. Outcomes of these research initiatives are summarised in four categories, namely, (a) data quality assessment, (b) trends/patterns assessment, (c) fitness-for-use assessment, and (d) ecosystem specific data diversity assessment. In conclusion we make specific suggestions to the GBIF community on the adoption of common indicators to assess progress towards future targets as well as recommendations to populate such exercise at various levels within the GBIF Network from national level to thematic levels

On the dates of GBIF mobilised primary biodiversity records

There are more than 267 million primary biodiversity data records published by hundreds of data publishers through the GBIF network. Thus, GBIF network is the single most comprehensive index for this kind of data. Ensuring or, at least, assessing data quality is of capital importance for the reliability and usability of this data. While conducting a time data gap analysis on this mass of data, we have detected some issues with the way date information is processed and shared. Dates can be obscured or altered under certain circumstances, when a specific combination of publisher’s error or date handling features, and faulty or inadequate date parsing and processing routines gets chained together. The extent of the date unreliability (either at the source or through GBIF portal) is not high, and further it is concentrated in a few data publishers. We analyse the types of errors and misprocessing in dates through the sources and the published records; assess their impact on the overall data quality of the published index, and suggest corrective measures

Implementing the European policies for alien species: networking, science, and partnership in a complex environment

The European Commission has recognized the need for more stringent action to manage biological invasions and has committed to develop a dedicated legislative instrument. Under this upcoming legislation, European countries and their relevant institutions will have additional obligations and commitments in respect to invasive alien species. In September 2012, the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) launched the European Alien Species Information Network (EASIN) to facilitate the exploration of existing alien species information from distributed sources and to assist the implementation of European policies on biological invasions. Subsequent to the launching of EASIN, there was an evident need to define its niche within a complex environment of global, European, regional and national information systems. Herein we propose an organizational chart clearly defining the role of each actor in this framework, and we emphasize the need for collaboration in order to effectively support EU policies