Peter Desmet

Open data coordinator

The Checklist recipe is an automated routine that uses the R programming language to standardize species checklist data. Species checklists are thematic or regional lists of species, with associated information (vernacular names, native/introduced status, etc.). These lists form an important source of information for biodiversity science and policy, such as the management of invasive alien species. The checklist recipe allows researchers to standardize their checklist data to the Darwin Core standard in an automated way, allowing these to be linked, discovered and integrated in the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). My colleagues and I developed the recipe for the TrIAS project and thought it would be useful for others as well. We're very honoured that it won the GBIF Ebbe Nielsen Challenge.

 

Tracking Invasive Alien Species (TrIAS) is a project funded through the BELSPO BRAIN call aiming to build an open data-driven framework to support policy on invasive species. You can read all about it in Vanderhoeven et al. 2017, but the core idea is to dynamically track the progression of alien species in Belgium, identify emerging species, assess their current and future risk and timely inform policy in a seamless data-driven workflow. But rather than reinventing the wheel, TrIAS builds upon and contributes to the fantastic open data (species checklists and occurrence data), infrastructures (such as GBIF) and standards (such as Darwin Core) that already exist. Applying this open science method to all aspects of the project (data, software and publications) is challenging and exciting, but also increases the project's applicability, repeatability and sustainability: something many research projects still lack.

 

3. What would be your wish for Biodiversity research in 2019?

I strongly believe that the future of biodiversity research is open reproducible science! Just like our friends at the Belgian Biodiversity Platform, open data publication and open source software development are core activities of our team at the INBO. Over the years we have seen a shift in biodiversity research where publishing data as open data is becoming more accepted. With the infrastructure and wealth of information now available at GBIF, researchers are seeing the benefits of open data. The next thing we want to tackle is support researchers in making their approach to science more open, repeatable and reusable. By offering training and developing research software (like R packages) they can understand and adapt. And we know from experience that collaborating in open science communities such as GBIF, Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) and rOpenSci is not only better for the future of biodiversity research, but also fun and rewarding.