Integrated Data management

在生物多样性-生态系统功能(BEF)研究中，预测变量--生物多样性--和因变量--生态系统功能和服务--都代表着复杂的概念。建立BEF关系所需的数据本身是高度不同的，通常是由协作的跨学科研究联盟产生的，这些研究联盟汇集了从分子生态学到遥感等不同学科的专业知识。在为BEF研究中的科学家提供高质量数据方面的突出挑战是：(1)提供适当的元数据以理解主要数据；(2)科学家同意在其数据集上遵守相同的命名约定；以及(3)科学家对其数据的使用是透明和公平的信心。在前一阶段，Z2已经开发了一个可伸缩的Web应用程序BEFdata，它可以应对所有三个挑战。BEFdata变得功能齐全，现在可以作为开放源码用于其他协作项目。与此同时，我们继续支持数据管理和综合。在下一阶段，我们将继续提供服务，并将通过在工作坊教授数据管理来加强数据门户的使用。我们将把重点放在通过在数据注释和质量检查方面提供帮助，以及通过改进在储存库和统计环境之间交换元数据的功能来改进元数据的质量和供应。我们将指导和促进为数据验证和复杂搜索汇编受控词汇的进程，并将为科学工作流程提供功能，为研究单位生成定制的、质量受控的合成数据集，并开发将这些数据集导出到基于EML的全球数据储存库的功能。

In biodiversity–ecosystem functioning (BEF) research, both the predictor – biodiversity – and the dependent variables – ecosystem functions and services – represent complex concepts. The data needed to establish BEF relationships are themselves highly heterogeneous and are typically generated by collaborative, interdisciplinary research consortia assembling expertise from various disciplines ranging from molecular ecology to remote sensing. The prominent challenges in providing quality data for scientists in BEF research are (1) the provision of appropriate metadata to understand the primary data (2) the agreement of scientists to adhere to the same naming conventions across their data sets, and (3) the confidence of scientists that the use of their data is transparent and fair. In the previous phase Z2 has developed a scalable web application, BEFdata, that meets all three challenges. BEFdata became fully functional and is now available as open source for other collaborative projects. At the same time, we continued to support data curation and synthesis. In the next phase, we will continue our service and will enhance the use of the data portal by teaching data management in workshops. We will place a focus on improving metadata quality and provision by providing help in data annotation and quality checking but also by improving functionalities to exchange metadata between repositories and statistical environments. We will steer and facilitate the process of assembling a controlled vocabulary for data validation and complex searches and will provide functionality for scientific workflows to generate tailor-made and quality-controlled synthesis datasets for the research unit and develop functionality to export these datasets to EML-based global data repositories.