[Taxacom] Cost of databases

Tue Aug 30 02:58:13 CDT 2016

The paper explicitly gives these cost estimates as those for four databases: IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, the IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, Protected Planet, and the World Database of Key Biodiversity Areas.  The estimates do not seem to touch on the associated work of field research, taxonomy, etc. which underlies the work of the expert groups adding entries to these datasets.

The comparison of these expert knowledge datasets with the Global Observing System for Climate is far from perfect.  That is a globally interconnected network of systems feeding a wide-range of continuous data from very large numbers of sensors into a complex data management and modelling framework.  For conservation databases to carry out a similar costing would probably require inclusion of the associated field work costs.

In the case of GBIF, we've been in existence for 15 years and run with a core budget of around €3 million per year - this covers not only the informatics and standards work, but also capacity enhancement activity around the world.  At national and institutional levels, a vast amount more (I'd estimate another order of magnitude at least) is spent on staff time collecting or entering data, curating and sharing databases, etc. All of this of course then really depends on the much, much larger investment over many decades in studying organisms, collecting specimens and observations, etc.  

I see activities like GBIF in part as a relatively small additional effort over and above the work of researchers to try to ensure that the data they collect remains discoverable and useful into the future and that it can grow in value through combination with other data.

Donald

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Donald Hobern - GBIF Executive Secretary - dhobern at gbif.org
Global Biodiversity Information Facility http://www.gbif.org/
GBIF Secretariat, Universitetsparken 15, DK-2100 Copenhagen Ø, Denmark
Tel: +45 3532 1471  Mob: +45 2875 1471  Fax: +45 2875 1480
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-----Original Message-----
From: Stephen Thorpe [mailto:stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz] 
Sent: Monday, 29 August 2016 11:53 PM
To: (Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu) <Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>; Mary Barkworth <Mary.Barkworth at usu.edu>
Cc: Donald Hobern <dhobern at gbif.org>
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Cost of databases

Perhaps Donald would like to comment on GBIF's annual budget compared with the claimed US$114 million to complete "the knowledge databases which underpin nature conservation and environmental decision-making"?

Stephen

--------------------------------------------
On Tue, 30/8/16, Mary Barkworth <Mary.Barkworth at usu.edu> wrote:

 Subject: [Taxacom] Cost of databases
 To: "(Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu)" <Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
 Received: Tuesday, 30 August, 2016, 9:43 AM

 http://www.iucnredlist.org/news/paper-reveals-nature-conservation-knowledge-is-a-bargain
 (refering to a paper pulished in PLOSOne http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0160640

 The first three paragraphs of the commenting paper:

 A new study released today finds that the knowledge  databases which underpin nature conservation and  environmental decision-making - such as the IUCN Red List of  Threatened Species(tm) - cost US$ 6.5 million annually to  manage, plus the dedication of thousands of volunteers.

 The authors estimated that US$ 160 million plus 293  volunteer-years have been invested to date in developing  these datasets, and the shortfall to complete the datasets  is approximately US$ 114 million.

 "This may sound expensive, but these costs are extremely low  when compared with other societal expenditures, such as the  Global Observing System for Climate, which required US$ 5 -
 7 billion to maintain in 2010," says Melanie Heath, Director  of Science, Policy and Information at BirdLife  International. "To put this in perspective, the annual  consumer spending on soft drinks is in the order of US$ 380  billion. Investing in these crucial datasets represents a  bargain for society - the costs to create and curate them  are easily outweighed by the benefits they deliver.
 [emphasis added]

 Now the challenge is to convert such information into  support. Note: "The motivation for the study came from the  private sector," says Diego Juffe-Bignoli, UNEP World  Conservation Monitoring Centre, and lead author. "Companies  which subscribe to the Integrated Biodiversity Assessment  Tool - which provides financial support for Protected  Planet, another of the datasets we costed in this research -  often ask us how much investment would be necessary to  maintain these critical data in perpetuity. Now we have an  answer."

 The

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