[Taxacom] pro-iBioshphere project Web Site launched

[Quentin Groom]

Just to make things a little clearer regarding the i-proBiosphere 
project I thought I'd post the press release (below).

You might also be interested in the workshops we are running in February 
(see: http://wiki.pro-ibiosphere.eu/wiki/Workshops_Leiden_February_2013 ).

Regards
Quentin groom

Press release...

Naturalis Biodiversity Center leads an infrastructure project that has 
received funding from the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) of the 
European Union for Coordination and Policy development in preparation 
for a European Open Biodiversity Knowledge Management System. The 
project aims to prepare a sustainable framework to better create, use 
and maintain the information generated in the EU's biodiversity 
institutions. These organisations manage data which is of vital 
importance to the conservation and sustainable use of global 
biodiversity. This project seeks to plan mechanisms to ensure that this 
information can be used to its maximum potential to conserve and enhance 
life on earth.

A consortium consisting of major European biodiversity organizations, 
including natural history museums, botanic gardens, companies and 
biological societies, announce the launch of pro-iBiosphere. This EU 
e-Infrastructure coordination project is targeting the preparation of 
the European Open Biodiversity Knowledge Management System.

During its two-year duration, pro-iBiosphere aims to prepare (= pro), 
through a coordination action, the ground for an integrative system (= 
sphere) for intelligent (= i) management of biodiversity (= bio) 
knowledge. Once it becomes operational, the European Open Biodiversity 
Knowledge Management System will play a major role in facilitating the 
synthesis of core biodiversity data. It will create an authoritative 
framework including discovery of new species, naming of specimens and 
species, identification tools, descriptions, and various other basic 
types of information. It will also facilitate the acquisition of high 
quality biodiversity data from various sources, including legacy data; 
the curation of the data; and at the same time it will optimize the 
delivery of those data to users.

Biodiversity science encompasses multiple disciplines (e.g., taxonomy, 
ecology, genomics, etc.) each with its own language, tools and data, to 
study the diversity of life in our planet and the environments it lives 
in. Motivated by the urgent modernization of the production and 
accessibility of these high quality biodiversity data, information and 
knowledge, the goal of pro-iBiosphere is to:

   1. Allow to streamline core biodiversity data mobilization,
   2. Facilitate semantic interoperability with services in general,
   3. Provide strategies to sustain useful workflows and pipelines,
   4. Help to make core biodiversity data and information accessible to
      various stakeholders,
   5. Define the optimal legal framework and policies for the system to
      work.

Workflows are highly dependent on data availability. The task of 
matching suitable data to workflows can be made easier through the use 
of consistent data governance and semantic presentation approaches 
across the many potential sources of biodiversity data at the 
international level.

    /?There is no doubt that we are entering an era where we will be
    overwhelmed by data. Information sciences are surely the key to
    being successful in this situation. The pro-iBiosphere activities
    represent an exciting and potentially important advance in the
    provision of key infrastructure to support the European biodiversity
    research community?,/ says Dr. Vincent S. Smith, coordinator of the
    EU FP7 ViBRANT project at the Natural History Museum London (NHM). 

pro-iBiosphere is an integrated project under the 7th Framework 
Programme (grant agreement no. 312848), to strengthen the development of 
a consistent and dynamic European policy for research infrastructures 
including the data produced by this infrastructure. The EUR1.3M 
coordination and support action brings together a complementary blend of 
partners representing scientific and technological expertise in the 
domains of biodiversity science and informatics. Participants in the 
project include: NBGB (Belgium), PENSOFT (Bulgaria), SIGMA (France), 
FUB-BGBM (Germany), MfN (Germany), Naturalis (the Netherlands), Plazi 
(Switzerland) and RBGK (UK). The project is supported by a distinguished 
scientific advisory board comprised of experts in the field of 
publishing, e-taxonomy and global infrastructures.

For more information please see http://www.pro-iBiosphere.eu

-- 
Dr. Quentin Groom
(Botany and Information Technology)

National Botanic Garden of Belgium
Domein van Bouchout
B-1860 Meise
Belgium

Landline; +32 (0) 226 009 20 ext. 364
FAX:      +32 (0) 226 009 45

E-mail:     quentin.groom at br.fgov.be
Skype name: qgroom
Website:    www.botanicgarden.be