JRS Biodiversity Foundation

Centro de Referência em Informação Ambiental

Organization: Centro de Referência em Informação Ambiental - CRIA

Project Location: Brazil

Web Address: www.cria.org.br

Title of Grant: "Enhancing the speciesLink Network"

Grant Amount: $200,000 over 2 years

Principal Investigator: Dora Ann Lange Canhos

Organization Background:

CRIA, the Reference Center on Environmental Information began its activities in December 2000. It disseminates biological information of environmental and industrial interest and through this, hopes to contribute directly to the conservation and sustainable use of Brazil's biological resources. Its belief is that a sustainable society is an informed society, where various different sectors produce and have access to high quality information as a basis for decision making. All information systems at CRIA are freely and openly accessible.

Grant Description:

This 2 year project will provide policy makers and scientists easier access and enhanced tools to this constantly growing critical information system on species and specimen data in Brazil.

The Problem:

In 2001, CRIA received a grant from Fapesp (The State of São Paulo Research Foundation) to develop an information system to link biological collection data in São Paulo State. The goal was to develop an information system using computers and free, shareware or open source software. The system had to be scalable, new collections could be added and not affect the performance of the network, and each collection’s routine should not be altered, meaning that each collection could continue using the management software of its choice. Each collection or data provider should also have full control over its own data and would make non-sensitive data freely and openly available on the Internet. The speciesLink network was launched experimentally in October 2002 with 12 collections and a few thousand records. The system today integrates data from more than 60 collections and one database with observation data. Currently, there are approximately 1.1 million records freely and openly available.

The speciesLink network requires the improvement of existing features and the development of new tools to support the further dissemination of quality data.

The Solution:

Existing features to be improved include:

spLinker: the software especially developed for collections to update their data in the network requires improvement
query interface: a new interface will be developed to help users easily select the data provider of interest
data cleaning: many routines need to be rewritten to improve performance
monitor: this is a management system implemented to follow the progress of each collection, to attend specificities of the Fapesp project. The goal is to improve the system and add new features as possible indicators, both of the network and of biodiversity
backup: general backup is carried out for all developments, but the data itself is considered of the responsibility of each collection. A reliable routine backup system for collections that send their data to the regional server shall be designed as most of these collections do not have reliable backup systems in place.

New tools to be developed include:

quick search: data will be harvested from the network and stored at a centralized database for quick searches. The distributed system will be used to meet the requirements of advanced applications of real time searches.
data commons space or data repository for observation data will be developed and integrated to the network
indicators: the implementation of new indicators either produced dynamically or on a regular basis will be studied and developed.
data cleaning: new tests to help data providers identify possible errors will be studied and introduced to the network.

Global Impact:

The definition of policies and strategies for sustainable socio-economic development depends on facilitated access to information. There is an increasing need for technical and scientific information to address emerging environmental problems, such as the release of transgenic organisms in the environment, the definition of strategies and priorities for the conservation of natural areas, the adoption of measures for the contention of agriculture pests, the prevention and control of endemic diseases, among many others. In spite of this need, Brazil’s knowledge base on biodiversity remains incipient and disaggregated. The existing information is dispersed, and as a rule, is not available in digital format. Changing this situation and increasing access to information is a priority.

Biological collections are the supporting infrastructure for underpinning scientific development and technological innovation in health, agriculture, biodiversity, environment, and industry. They are repositories of live and preserved material (specimens, strains, and samples), associated to biological and geographic data. They are key to taxonomic work and indispensable infrastructure for several fields of knowledge. The specimens attest the biological wealth of regions, certify the denomination of a group of organisms, and represent the information base for analysis of geographic distribution, morphological diversity, and evolution of species. They document morphological features and taxonomical concepts and how these concepts were modified.

This initiative has as principle that all publicly funded, non sensitive data should be freely and openly available on the Internet to all interested.