Global biodata resources: crucial infrastructure underpinning biodiversity research

The importance of globally-connected infrastructure, its dependence on distributed resources, and its potential fragility will be addressed at next month’s conference on Biodiversity Information Standards TDWG 2023.

Biodata Infrastructure within Australia and Beyond: Landscapes and horizons will be co-presented by Chuck Cook from the Global Biodata Coalition, Kathryn Hall from the Australian Reference Genome Atlas, and Jeff Christiansen from the BioCommons.

This session will characterise the worldwide biodata infrastructure (Global Core Biodata Resources (GBC) and an inventory of biodata resources). Managers of data resources and aggregators are invited to discover the context of the entire infrastructure and to explore the scope and scale of connections and dependencies with other resources; the funding sources for the resources; and the impacts arising from the funding uncertainty associated with the underlying resources.

Life science data resources are numerous, distributed and variously interconnected, forming a singular, and arguably the largest, infrastructure for global biological research. These resources are critical for guaranteeing reproducibility and integrity for life sciences research, including biodiversity studies. Sustainably funding this disseminated infrastructure is a key challenge: the GBC is working with the funders who support many of these resources to ensure long-term funding for existing infrastructure, while also channelling support to underpin future growth in data volumes and new technologies.

TDWG 2023 is a hybrid conference taking place in Tasmania between Monday 9 Oct and Friday 13 Oct. In-person and virtual registration is now open.