W12: Tools and Applications for Data Standards and Knowledge Sharing in Plant Biodiversity

Title

Tools and Applications for Data Standards and Knowledge Sharing in Plant Biodiversity

Workshop type

Project Workshop (Project specific talks + Discussions)

Organizer

Laurel Cooper, Oregon State University

Biodiversity research is the study of the variety and variability of life on Earth, and it encompasses a wide range of scales from local to global.  Scientists have been collecting biodiversity data through observations and documentation for hundreds of years.  Much of that information is currently stored in free text descriptions of specimens, data tables, and published papers.  In keeping with the theme of ICBO 2016: Food, Nutrition, Health and Environment for the 9 billion, there is a need to enable scientists to leverage this data and improve sharing, discovery and interoperability.  Only through this approach can we meet the needs of a growing population and changing climate.
Recent advances in standards and semantics for biodiversity data include initiatives from such groups as The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF; http://www.gbif.org/), and Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG; http://www.tdwg.org/) group. The GBIF is an international open data infrastructure which is encouraging the adoption of common standards, and provides access to data about all types of life on Earth.  The TDWG focuses on the development of standards for the exchange of biological/biodiversity data such as the Darwin Core, and the Access to Biological Collections Data (ABCD).

The goals of this workshop are to bring together a set of researchers to present cutting-edge work in this area of plant biodiversity data representation and semantics.  We will have presentations by invited speakers, followed by a panel discussion.

This is an emerging area of plant biology research with rapid advances happening. Therefore, this workshop will attract a different set of researchers who would not normally come to the ICBO meeting. Thus broadening the participation.