TDWG BioGeo Interoperability Task Group Meeting

Results of the TDWG meeting

A week long workshop was held in Campinas, Brazil during the first week of April 2007. The focus of the workshop was to develop a testbed web application that demonstrates the interoperability of digital data and services - with particular emphasis on geospatial, taxonomic and occurrence data. A prototype web application was developed in php. The wizard style application leads the user through a defined sequence of steps in order to aquire sufficient data to create a niche model. The process includes taxonomic validation using the Catalogue of Life, search and retrieval of occurrence data using services such as GBIF portal or WFS, selection of raster layers representing environmental data needed in the modelling process, and modelling these data using the openModeller Web Service in order to create a probability surface that represents areas where a species is likely to be able to survive.

The workshop highlighted just how easy it is to rapidly create such a feature rich application using open access to data and software. It also highlighted some areas where further work is needed in order to truly be able to blend these kinds of services into a cohesive computing platform.

The workshop attendees are in the process of completing a report and finalising some aspects of the application prototype. For more information visit the workshop wiki page at:

http://wiki.tdwg.org/twiki/bin/view/Geospatial/InteroperabilityWorkshop1

Organizers