In the last two decades, the availability of biodiversity data in digital format has increased enormously, mainly thanks to efforts to digitize collections of natural history, and more recently thanks to the contribution of initiatives that capture information on species observations. These datasets are shared and are frequently offered to the community through data aggregators that, through their online portals, allow to consult at the same time information coming from many different sources around the world, facilitating its use in scientific studies. various characters.
Since the sources of data and the way in which they are originally captured are very heterogeneous, to be shared with the community, it is necessary to use certain common standards and tools, such as the Darwin Core standard and the Integrated Data Publishing Tool (IPT) of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). Although the use of these standards is broad in the community, the quality of the data is still not homogeneous. Some factors that contribute to this are: not following the standards strictly, the lack of detailed documentation about the standards and the lack of controlled vocabularies.
This event, coordinated by the team of SiB Colombia, invited participants to join this discussion. Held at Javeriana University, Bogota, the Speakers Paula Zermoglio and John Wieczorek presented the current situation of biodiversity data shared worldwide, the main factors that contribute to improving its quality and the actions that could be taken to optimize its use in decision making and conservation of biodiversity.
