The challenge of an open access environment for biodiversity across Europe and Brazil

“Europe and Brazil share many cultural and social roots and values, which are reflected in the way we have been addressing the socio-economic potential and the challenges of ICT. […] Both sides have a lot to gain in further strengthening collaboration in this field".
Ms Neelie Kroes, European Commission Vice-President for the Digital Agenda, released this statement in conjunction with the Workshop "Brazil-EU Cooperation in ICT R&D" which took place on 7th & 8th November in Brasilia, Brazil , crowning the launch of a new coordinated call for research and development, while a new project had just started exactly to respond to European and Brazilian need of cooperation in biodiversity.

Funded by the European Commission (7th Framework Programme) and the Brazilian Minister of Science Technology and Innovation (MCTI) - National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) within the 2010 edition of the EU-Brazil coordinated call, EUBrazilOpenBio “Open Data and Cloud Computing e-Infrastructure for Biodiversity” will set-up a virtual environment, namely an e-Infrastructure of open access resources, to tackle the complexity of Biodiversity Science, in line with the European and Brazilian drive to “[…] join forces to deploy cloud computing solutions to address scientific challenges in fields such as environment modelling, biodiversity and life science ”.
 

A USER-CENTRIC E-INFRASTRUCTURE FOR EMPOWERING BIODIVERSITY RESEARCH

Tackling the complexity of Biodiversity Science requires dealing with multiple multidisciplinary datasets spanning from climatology to earth sciences, all of key importance to overcome the fragmentation and focus on uniting existing different European and Brazilian data sources, in order to provide scientists with an even greater knowledge base, achieved through the integration and shared use of appropriate computing resources.
"Encouraging and boosting the electronic use of biodiversity information is urgent for correct management of global problems related to environmental change, nature conservation and the sustainability use of biological resources” explains Donatella Castelli, EUBrazilOpenBio European Scientific Director. “An impressive set of open access resources and technologies related to the biodiversity domain have been developed by EU and Brazilian projects and initiatives. The time is therefore ripe for accelerating the creation of a data e-infrastructure for supporting more effective biodiversity research and innovation processes through the sharing and reuse of these resources". But how can we integrate the existing different information systems and infrastructures to make the data available in a seamless and integrated way?
 

MAKING BIODIVERSITY DATA SPEAK THE SAME LANGUAGE
“The goal of EUBrazilOpenBio is to achieve the interoperation of existing Brazilian and European e-infrastructures in distributed computing, scientific data and portal and Platforms layers” explained Vanderlei Perez Canhos, EUBrazilOpenBio Brazilian Coordinator at the workshop “Global Research Data Infrastructures: The Big data Challenges”, promoted and organised by the GRDI2020 initiative in Brussels on the 18th of October . “In this project we are focusing on the integration of data software platforms in a way that they can run through any kind of infrastructures. An environment where European and Brazilian data infrastructures and tools will be integrated to upgrade the cross-mapping of taxonomies between the Brazilian Plant Species List and the Global Catalogue of Life”.

The principal product of the project will be to operate an e-Infrastructure for the biodiversity user communities working on biodiversity taxonomy and niche modelling. “A user services support and operation centre will be set-up to support our user communities while exploiting the Virtual Research Environment provided by the EUBrazilOpenBio platform“ explains Vinod Rebello, EUBrazilOpenBio Brazilian Scientific Director. “The success of EUBrazilOpenBIo will be measured by the level of our users' satisfaction”.
 

EUBRAZILOPENBIO FIRST STEPS

EUBrazilOpenBio officially started on 1st October 2011 and has already been presented in Europe, at the GRDI2020 workshop on 18th October in Brussels, and in Brasil at the Workshop "Brazil-EU Cooperation in ICT R&D" 7th Nov 2011, Brasilia by Vanderlei Perez Canhos, Brazilian Coordinator, and  Vassil Alexandrov, European Coordinator.  It has two main objectives: to empower user groups to leverage data e-Infrastructure of Open Access resources, tools and services & to educate collaborative communities, especially next generation scientists, on the benefits of such data e-Infrastructure, as an example of cooperative research without frontiers.

“EUBrazilOpenBio can be a good basis to integrate the efforts in other Latin American countries in way to influence the policy for research data infrastructure and innovation in the Region”
Vanderlei Perez Canhos
EUBrazilOpenBio Brazilian Coordinator

EUBrazilOpenBio has already embarked on the web:
www.eubrazilopenbio.org |http://twitter.com/EUBrazilOpenBio
For info: contact@eubrazilopenbio.eu

In memory of Prof. Bisby
Professor Frank Bisby, a visionary scientist and a pioneer in biodiversity informatics and a partner in EUBrazilOpenBio passed away suddenly, on Tuesday 25th October 2011. He will be missed by his colleagues and friends.