Sharing expertise to manage data for science and society

Mentoring among GBIF Participants will support network-building and publication of biodiversity data from Indonesia, Costa Rica and cities worldwide.

Three projects have been selected to receive support through GBIF’s 2012 mentoring programme, aimed at sharing expertise and technical support between Participants to stimulate development of biodiversity information facilities.

GBIF national Nodes in Japan, Australia and South Africa will act as mentors in the projects involving institutions in Indonesia, Costa Rica and some 20 local governments affiliated to ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability.

In the first project, GBIF Japan will help the Indonesian Institute of Sciences, which hosts the national Node, to establish a network for the management of biodiversity information. The Japanese Node will provide training for Indonesian colleagues to help develop a national plan for managing and publishing data.

In addition to support provided from core GBIF funds, GBIF Japan is to receive six million Yen (about €63,000) over three years from Tokyo’s National Museum of Nature and Science, for mentoring projects primarily in Southeast Asia, with an initial focus on Indonesia.

In the second mentoring project, the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA) will act as mentor to Costa Rica’s national biodiversity body INBio. The collaboration will help define a national strategy and action plan to mobilize and publish data through Costa Rica’s GBIF Node CRBio. A national workshop on biodiversity informatics is planned, and a group of software developers from INBio will be trained to adapt technology developed by ALA to suit Costa Rica’s needs.

In the final project, the South African Biodiversity Information Facility (SABIF) will act as mentor to ICLEI, a global network of local governments whose Local Action on Biodiversity centre is based in Cape Town. ICLEI is an associate participant of GBIF, and the project will provide technical support to help set up a data hosting centre. Staff from about 20 local governments from cities around the world will be trained in using tools and standards supported by GBIF to enable biodiversity data to be published and freely accessed. As part of the project, a workshop for data publishers from local governments will be held during the Cities and Biodiversity Summit in Hyderabad, India in October.

Each of the three projects will receive between €10,000 and €15,000 from GBIF’s core funds, which are provided through financial contributions from its Participant governments.

The GBIF mentoring programme aims to accelerate the establishment of biodiversity information facilities at the GBIF participant level. Each mentoring project is a collaboration between two or more Nodes, in which a recipient Node requests technical assistance from more experienced Nodes. The 2013 call for mentoring projects will be announced in late 2012 with a deadline for submissions 31 March 2013.

For further information, contact:

Mélianie Raymond

GBIF Secretariat

mraymond@gbif.org

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