Partners signal new alliance for biodiversity knowledge

More than 100 delegates at 2nd Global Biodiversity Informatics Conference agree need for light-touch coordination of overlapping initiatives, supporting connected solutions to answer key questions about life on Earth

A global alliance to transform our understanding of biodiversity by connecting all efforts to observe, measure and model the living planet: that’s the vision shared by experts from all global regions who met in Copenhagen, Denmark from 24-27 July to discuss next steps for delivering biodiversity knowledge in the information age.

The 2nd Global Biodiversity Informatics Conference (GBIC2) gathered representatives from key global, regional, national and subnational networks, agencies, organizations and institutions. Relying on the Global Biodiversity Informatics Outlook framework developed at the first GBIC event in 2012, attendees explored the possibilities of better aligning the efforts and interests of all biodiversity research communities and infrastructures.

The conference surveyed possible models for such an alliance in other research areas, such as ELIXIR, an intergovernmental organization to connect European life science resources, and The Apache Software Foundation, a broad community of open-source software developers and users. They actively explored the possibility of a coordination mechanism that could align and accelerate efforts to understand the world’s biodiversity. The result was consensus for establishing a lightweight international alliance, open to all institutions and individuals with an interest in improving the availability and quality of biodiversity knowledge. Attendees assigned GBIF the task of facilitating the next stages in this process.

For more information see the original news on the GBIF.org website.