Diversifying the GBIF Data Model

Darwin Core—the most commonly used data standard in the GBIF community—has provided a simple and effective framework for supporting the growth of species occurrence data available from the GBIF network. But the simplicity of this standard, established and maintained by Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG), has significant limitations when it comes to shaping data from diverse sources.

At both the Global Nodes Meeting and the 28th meeting of the GBIF Governing Board in 2021, GBIF head of informatics Tim Robertson and biodiversity-data expert John Wieczorek detailed initial case studies highlighting these limitations while outlining possible approaches for supporting richer, more complex types of biodiversity data.