Biodiversity data: the value to society

Open access of data that have been gathered by means of public funding is increasingly being promoted by the Dutch government and important Knowledge centers like the KNAW (Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences), NWO (Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research) and Dutch Universities. In practice however, open access is in many cases still no reality. One of the reasons is the lack of awareness regarding the potential use of biodiversity data that are freely available.

The Netherlands Biodiversity Information Facility (NLBIF) is the Dutch node of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). GBIF makes global data on biodiversity (plants, animals, micro-organisms) freely available to everyone, everywhere in the world. The task of NLBIF is to provide data from the Netherlands to the GBIF-network.

The GBIF and NLBIF data can be quite valuable in respect to many practical challenges society is facing. For example, GBIF may enable monitoring of the distribution of disease vectors, like the malaria mosquito. Biodiversity data may also enable companies to prevent or minimize their impact on biodiversity. For example when a company is looking for a new factory location: what endangered species are present in the area and what does this mean for the company? NLBIF has asked CREM to look into the added value of open access biodiversity data for a number of different target groups and to illustrate the added value by means of a selection of convincing cases.

• Contact: Wijnand Broer >>

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