Towards a national bio-environmental data facility: experiences from the Atlas of Living Australia
Towards a national bio-environmental data facility: experiences from the Atlas of Living Australia
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DOI：
10.1080/13658816.2015.1077962
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发表时间：
2016-01-02
影响因子：
5.7
通讯作者：
Williams, Kristen J.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Belbin, Lee;Williams, Kristen J.
澳大利亚生活地图集（ALA: http://www.ala.org.au）以一致的格式为澳大利亚地区提供了最大的免费和开放的综合生物和环境信息库。截至2015年6月，ALA收录了超过5500万条记录（占全球生物多样性信息设施（GBIF）总量的10%），包括15万多个本地和外来物种，近500层网格和多边形生物环境数据，3900多万页生物文献，以及4.5万多张物种图像和其他综合生物数据。ALA研究接口的开发（http://spatial.ala.org.au）是开发一个架构的触发器，该架构旨在将在线使用的环境数据与生物数据紧密集成。环境层被分类为环境层（具有连续值的网格）或上下文层（具有离散类值的多边形）。已经开发了一套分析和可视化工具，以证明整合ALA的生物和环境数据的价值。本文概述了建立ALA的目的和过程，并讨论了与澳大利亚地区生物多样性研究相关的环境数据的整合，以及不断改进研究、区域管理、教育和公民科学服务的愿景。ALA的环境基础设施满足了当前的需求，但增加的数据类型、数量和分辨率表明，未来需要新的方向来提供高质量的服务。建立ALA的经验对其他机构建立类似的基础设施，以支持综合获取和使用其国家生物和环境信息具有重要意义。
The Atlas of Living Australia (ALA: http://www.ala.org.au) provides the largest free and open repository of integrated biological and environmental information in a consistent format for the Australian region. As of June 2015, the ALA contained over 55 million records (10% of Global Biodiversity Information Facility's (GBIF's) total), consisting of 150,000+ native and alien species, nearly 500 layers of gridded and polygonal bio-environmental data, 39+ million pages of biological literature, and 45,000+ images of species and other integrated biological data. The development of the research interface to the ALA (http://spatial.ala.org.au) was the trigger to develop an architecture designed to tightly integrate environmental data for online use with biological data. Environmental layers are classed as environmental (gridded with continuous values) or contextual (polygonal with discrete class values). A suite of analysis and visualization tools have been developed to demonstrate the value of integrating the ALA's biological and environmental data. This paper outlines the purpose and process of establishing the ALA and discusses the integration of environmental data relevant to biodiversity research in the Australian region and the vision for continually improved services for research, area management, education, and citizen science. The ALA's environmental infrastructure addresses current needs but increased data types, volumes, and resolution suggests new directions are needed to provide quality services into the future. The experience of building the ALA has relevance for other agencies setting up similar infrastructure which supports integrated access to and use of their national biological and environmental information.