TDWG 2020: Capturing Ideas for the Future of BioCASe Provider & the GBIF IPT (a) -  Working Sessions
Channel: Biodiversity Information Standards TDWG
Date: 2020-09-25

The BioCASe Provider Software (BPS) and the GBIF Integrated Publishing Toolkit (IPT) have been fundamental components used to build open biodiversity data infrastructure. Closely following the TDWG standards, these tools have been used for more than a decade across several data networks and have an established community of users. This has led to a good understanding of the limitations. Understanding these issues and considering the upward trend of using open data repositories, we believe it is a good time to start discussion around the future needs of these tools.

In this session we will present ideas for directions that the tools could adopt, propose a way to identify the features in current widespread use and invite discussion around ideas from users.

This will touch on questions and topics such as:

- Should the BPS and IPT be merged into a combined tool, and which specific functions can possibly be dropped?
- Should the components for data mapping, metadata authoring, registration in e.g. GBIF/OBIS be separated and available in separate modules?
- Should the tool allow you to push data to an open repository, rather than requiring running a server on the internet?
- What are the institutional needs? Access to a local database? Data served from your own servers?
- What enrichment to metadata is required; aspects of the Collections Descriptions work?
- Would support for RDF, FrictionlessData and more complete EML Data mapping enable wider use of these data?
- What level of data validation should be included in the data mapping process?
- What technologies should be used for the next generation of tools?
- How can these be deployed with minimal disruption to existing users?
- Are there developments in other areas that can be used and adapted instead of a new development?

More detail around these topics is given in an ideas paper, which may help guide the discussion.

The outputs and key points from the discussion will be captured to help contribute to the roadmap for these tools.

Session Type: Workshop

Organizers: Jörg Holetschek, Botanic Garden & Botanical Museum, Berlin; Tim Robertson, GBIF, Copenhagen, Denmark