EC-OBIS work plan
On 26-27 May 2021, 35 participants from 20 countries representing 22 OBIS nodes participated in the 4th session of the OBIS Executive Committee, which was also held as an interim OBIS steering group meeting. The committee reviewed the status of the 2021 OBIS work plan and discussed new activities.
The OBIS steering group welcomed the new technical developments and capabilities in OBIS (new bioinformatics pipelines) leveraged through the Flanders’ government funded PacMAN project (Pacific Islands Marine Bioinvasions Alert Network). This will also allow OBIS to embark on new activities and transitioning OBIS into supporting operational activities, such as supporting local biodiversity monitoring and evaluation based on (e)DNA.
The collaboration with the GBIF network was briefly discussed and a follow-up meeting will further discuss and make recommendations on the data flow of marine data from GBIF nodes/publishers to OBIS.
The steering group agreed to hire a consultant to perform a review of the (increased) requirements from key stakeholders (e.g., GOOS, MBON, ODIS, and those identified through Ocean Decade Actions) and do a gap analysis or assessment of OBIS and its nodes’ capacity to support those needs including support for EOV data management. The steering group also agreed to contract a communication company to support the development of online video training tutorials.
The steering group endorsed the new terms of reference of the OBIS vocabulary project team. The OBIS vocab team is working on guidelines for mapping the most commonly used Measurement or Fact terms with the preferred BODC vocab and will propose a way forward to develop a mechanism or governance strategy to coordinate and build community consensus with regards to vocab mapping and priority setting of creating new vocab terms, including training.
The OBIS genetic data project team reported on the progress in developing guidelines using biodiversity data standards for sequence based data (in collaboration with TDWG and GBIF) and will illustrate this through a few use cases. The OBIS specific guidelines will be ready for presentation and adoption at the next OBIS steering group meeting (November 2021).
OBIS will be involved in several UN Ocean Decade programmes and IODE also requested OBIS to submit a standalone Decade Project proposal, which should present a vision and roadmap on what OBIS envisions to become by 2030, and how it can support the various Decade actions.
Link to the report.
