Sixth IEEE International Symposium on Cluster Computing and the Grid Workshops (CCGRIDW'06) Prospects for a Biodiversity Grid: Managing Biodiversity Knowledge Singapore May 16-May 19 ISBN: 0-7695-2585-7
A wide variety of data has been collected by individuals and groups, for use in biodiversity-related scientific research. There is a need to be able to select and combine relevant biodiversity data, perhaps in ways the original creators did not envisage, and to use it in conjunction with other data such as climate data in order to perform analyses to answer important biodiversity questions. In this paper we outline the need for biodiversity e-Science problem solving environments underpinned by suitable Grids, discussing what one might expect to characterise such a system, and identifying the kinds of problems that need to be solved in order to create a usable environment for biodiversity researchers. We discuss techniques for data access and interoperability, drawing on our experience in the BiodiversityWorld, BioDA and BUFFIE projects. These include the provision of an interoperation platform and the use of ontologies as a basis for determining data transformations. We then concentrate on a very specific problem in biodiversity e-Science that needs to be addressed. This problem is the variation of opinion among experts which leads to conflicting ways of classifying, naming and describing organisms, and differing opinions about the reliability of other scientists? work. We describe an early prototype, myViews, that the author has created in order to explore these issues. In this prototype it is possible, among other things, to transform data that reflects a given perspective into another that reflects the user?s perspective. We conclude by discussing the wider relevance of this work and, in particular, its relevance to the provision of metadata relating to biodiversity globally unique identifiers.
Citation:
Andrew C. Jones, "Prospects for a Biodiversity Grid: Managing Biodiversity Knowledge," ccgrid, vol. 2, pp.42, Sixth IEEE International Symposium on Cluster Computing and the Grid Workshops (CCGRIDW'06), 2006 Usage of this product signifies your acceptance of the Terms of Use. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||