ITR/IM(BIO): Biodiversity Data Discovery and Integration

基于网络的物种信息的多样性反映了地球上生命的巨大多样性。这些信息通常很难找到，也不便于使用。对科学家有用的网页往往对学生来说是无法访问的，而教育网页通常没有研究兴趣。与库存充足的建筑供应仓库中的部件不同，关于生物的数据库和网页很难定位并组合成连贯的结构。本项目采用组件架构实现生物多样性网络信息的无缝集成。它为物种名称的起源和权威定位提供了基础，为物种分布图的提取提供了基础，并为不相关的数据库和网站之间的合作提供了具体细节。这是通过使用XML实现的，XML是一种可扩展标记语言，已被用于解决web其他部分的类似问题。该项目开发XML网关，使不能生成XML的数据源变得灵活，并提供对同一数据的多个视图。这可以适应不同的目的，教育背景和年龄。为了说明其广泛的用途，该框架将提供给一组与生物学本科生和研究生一起工作的学校教师，以制作一个可访问的波士顿哥伦比亚角栖息地野外指南，以及课堂使用的课程材料。

The tremendous diversity of life on the planet is mirrored by the diversity of web-based information about species. This information is often difficult to find and unfriendly to use. Web pages that are useful to scientists are often inaccessible to schoolchildren, and education pages usually hold no research interest. Unlike the parts in a well-stocked building supply warehouse, the databases and web pages about organisms are difficult to locate and combine into coherent structure.This project uses a component architecture to integrate biodiversity web information seamlessly. It introduces building blocks to locate the origin and authority of a species name, to extract maps for species distribution, and provides nuts and bolts by which unrelated databases and web site can be made to cooperate. This is achieved through using XML, the eXtensible Markup Language that has been used in solving comparable problem in other parts of the web. The project develops XML gateways to make flexible the data sources not able to produce XML and provides multiple views on the same data. This accommodates different purposes, educational background and ages, for example.To illustrate its broad utility, the framework will be provided to a group of school teachers working with biology undergraduates and graduate students to produce a web-accessible field guide to the habitats of Columbia Point, Boston, together with curricular material for classroom use.