H2020 GLOBIS-B Project: Global Infrastructures to Support Biodiversity Research
- Type Project
- Status Filled
- Execution 2015 -2018
- Assigned Budget 1.005.875,00 €
- Scope Europeo
- Main source of financing H2020
- Project website Proyecto GLOBIS-B
Focus on user requirements: Discussion of the scientific issues underpinning the VBE concept and the related technical and data requirements for its calculation. Two workshops resulted in a multi-authored article published in open access. Two further workshops led to the preparation of similar publications. The results also informed GEO BON in its VBE development initiatives. Data and technical services for infrastructure provision: Cooperation of technical experts and infrastructure operators to align the aforementioned requirements with the existing capabilities of research infrastructures.
The design of a computational workflow helped tailor requirements and identify the expected contributions of each infrastructure to the workflow components. An additional end result is a manifesto with ten principles, which serves as a guide with the specific implementation actions needed for participating research infrastructures to fully support the emerging EBV operational framework, based on transnational and interinfrastructural scientific workflows. Policy and legal aspects: Addressing the legal interoperability of data and software. Vendor licenses, if any, vary widely, hindering the correct use of data and software. This is a major obstacle when composing a computational workflow with components from different sources and owners, especially when legal licenses are not machine-readable or interpretable.
A final workshop with representatives of political bodies fostered the interest of actual users of EBV data and discussed next steps for producing EBVs on a global scale. Dissemination and workshop organization: mechanisms for disseminating and organizing the project workshops contributed to strong project visibility and the role of research infrastructures in supporting EBV construction. Dissemination also targeted the scientific and technical communities, the GEO community, and the Research Data Alliance (the latter focusing on the process of transforming observational data into relevant information products).
Biodiversity and ecosystem research addresses the major societal challenge of predicting the biosphere in the context of global environmental change. It is difficult to predict the complex ways in which the biosphere changes in relation to other planetary and global changes. Researchers are addressing this major societal challenge, as biodiversity change has a huge impact on environmental stability in terms of temperature, air composition, the availability of freshwater and food, and overall human health.
The GLOBIS-B project studied how biodiversity research infrastructures can collaborate globally to provide data provision and processing services to researchers on biodiversity change. Specific challenges include the dispersion of data, which is often not interoperable, across numerous repositories and numerous gaps, especially in time-series data. Furthermore, one problem lies in the differing views among scientists on how to express change in different dimensions of biodiversity (such as genes, species, and communities).
The GEO Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON) has proposed, in collaboration with the scientific community, a minimum set of Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs), but these require implementation and testing for wider use. To address these challenges, the GLOBIS-B project also addressed the capabilities required to process massive datasets in data-driven computational workflows and web services from different research infrastructures. The project promoted global cooperation among world-class research infrastructures, focusing on specific services to support cutting-edge research addressing biosphere prediction and the measurement of indicators of biodiversity change.
More specifically, the project objectives were: to facilitate multilateral cooperation among global research infrastructures to support cutting-edge research in biosphere prediction, with a focus on Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs); to specify requirements for the extraction, management, and analysis of biodiversity data needed for EBV classes from diverse sources; to develop an integrated research agenda with these requirements that enables research infrastructures to enhance existing or develop new capabilities; to agree on realistic solutions to address the research agenda, so that research infrastructures can offer specific services for calculating selected EBVs; to develop good practices for infrastructure support for grand biodiversity challenges; to address legal implications regarding licensing, intellectual property rights (IPRs), and resource sharing; and to communicate and disseminate results to policy stakeholders and other interest groups.
Another key question is how realistic and pragmatic solutions can simplify legal obstacles to the reciprocal use of data and software tools from different sources. Solutions must be feasible for both scientific communities and collaborating research infrastructures, especially with regard to direct machine-to-machine interaction. Through a fifth final workshop, interaction with national, supranational, and global policy bodies contributed to potential improvements in general policies supporting legal interoperability.
Biodiversity and ecosystem research is addressing the major societal challenge of predicting the biosphere under global environmental change. Advancing scientific progress in understanding the complexity of natural systems requires global cooperation among supporting research infrastructures to provide essential data at different temporal and spatial scales. This includes providing capabilities to process large and massive datasets. GLOBIS-B is a global cooperation of world-class research infrastructures with a focus on specific services to support frontier research addressing biosphere prediction and measuring indicators of biodiversity change.
The project brings together key scientists with global research infrastructure operators and legal interoperability experts to address the research needs and infrastructure services that underpin the concept of Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs). EBVs were proposed by the GEO Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON) and are a prerequisite for understanding biodiversity and ecosystem change. Integrated scientific and technical workshops will identify the primary data, analytical tools, methodologies, and more needed to develop an infrastructure development agenda for calculating EBVs and explore the discovery of necessary, interoperable data at broader spatial and temporal scales.
Self-documenting and openly shared implementations of common standards and workflows facilitate international cooperation, and realistic and pragmatic solutions are explored to simplify legal obstacles to the reciprocal use of data and software tools from different sources. Solutions should be feasible for both cooperating scientific communities and research infrastructures, especially with regard to achieving direct machine-to-machine interactions. Interaction with national, supranational, and global policy bodies contributes to potential improvements in general policies that support legal interoperability.
The project built on the existing capabilities of collaborating research infrastructures and laid the groundwork for their use in computational workflows for the production of large-scale EBV datasets. This led to considerable progress in understanding the EBV concept, in collaboration between research infrastructures to implement computational workflows for EBV construction, and in how both policymakers and scientific communities can benefit from a resource of EBV data products. A coordinated trial on biodiversity changes related to the distribution of invasive species demonstrated that GLOBIS-B results are practically feasible.
Depending on the preferred policy indicator, it is now possible to construct the indicator from a selection of EBV datasets. Sufficiently large EBV datasets would potentially allow for forecasting trends and assessing the impact of environmental management interventions. The fifteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties in 2020 is expected to update the Convention's strategic plan, and GEO BON, inspired by the results of GLOBIS-B, will inform delegates on how and under what conditions a larger EBV dataset could be implemented. It is possible to construct industrial-scale EBV data products and thus generate a large EBV dataset.
Each research infrastructure is planning a common policy for their region for the creation of such EBV datasets at the national and regional levels. Finally, collaboration with a working group of the Research Data Alliance (RDA) resulted in recommendations on best practices for data owners regarding legal issues related to data access and interoperability.
- UNIVERSITEIT VAN AMSTERDAM (UvA)
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