This interview is part of a series featuring the nine winners selected during the first DTO-BioFlow Open Call.
This initiative aimed to identify data holders capable of facilitating sustained and long-term ingestion of previously inaccessible biodiversity data into the EDITO infrastructure, which supports the EU Digital Twins of the Ocean (DTO) programme through EMODnet. The selected projects cover a variety of topics and data collection methods, including citizen observation,AI-assisted imaging, net trawls and benthic grabs. These projects focus on diverse organisms, such as cetaceans, plankton and benthos,and cover different regions, from the Arctic Ocean to the Mediterranean Ocean to the Azores, ensuring a comprehensive approach to biodiversity data collection.
The interviews with the selected data providers were conducted during the Data Grants Holders Workshop in April 2024, held at the VLIZ (Flanders Marine Institute) InnovOcean Campus in Ostend, Belgium. This event was designed to equip participants with the necessary skills to reformat and implement quality control on their data, ensuring alignment with international standards and contributing effectively to EMODnet Biology. To explore the training, have a look at the training material, the post event article and the teaser.
In this interview, Roseanna Wright, marine data manager at the National Oceanographic Centre, discusses the impact of their winning project, “Pipeline for biodiversity data from the British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC) to the OBIS network and EMODnet”. The NOC is a BODCs parent organisation and conducts world leading research in large scale oceanography. BODCs is also a provider of physical data but fails to provide biodiversity data in a straightforward way. Their winning project focuses on outputting data to the OBIS-ENV format. With the work and the knowledge acquired they aim to improve the capabilities to receive and ingest DwCA data into their systems.
Who are you, and what is the name of your institute?
I am Roseanna Wright, a marine data manager from the British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC), part of the United Kingdom’s National Oceanography Centre (NOC).
What type of data does your institute produce, how is it produced, and in which regions do you operate?
The National Oceanography Centre (NOC), which is BODCs parent organisation, conducts world leading research in large scale oceanography, it is a multi-disciplinary centre with research encompassing Marine Physics and Ocean Climate, Marine Systems Modelling, Ocean BioGeosciences, and Ocean Technology and Engineering. While BODC itself doesn’t directly collect data, we work closely with scientists who do, and as data managers we play a crucial role in managing oceanographic data generated by Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) research grants. NERC, the UK’s premier agency for funding and overseeing research across atmospheric, Earth, biological, terrestrial, and aquatic sciences, mandates that data be deposited with a NERC data centre. BODC is the designated NERC data centre for marine data. We are responsible for preserving these valuable data for long-term storage, ensuring they remain accessible and ready for future use. Our extensive data repository is multidisciplinary, containing chemical, physical, biological, and geophysical measurements from around the world.
BODC is well connected to national and international initiatives committed to ensuring oceanographic data and information are Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR). BODC acts as the UK’s National Oceanographic Data Centre (NODC) under the International Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange (IODE) of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Additionally, BODC is an accredited Data Archive Centre (DAC) within the Marine Environmental Data and Information Network (MEDIN). BODC works within these networks to improve access to and stewardship of marine data.
How will your project add value to existing data flows?
Our project “Pipeline for biodiversity data from the British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC) to the OBIS network and EMODnet”, will be an extension to our existing data flows and an activation of our ability to directly publish biodiversity data.
Since the 1990s BODC have managed biological data using the same workflows and database structure as other discrete sample data using standardised data management protocols. BODC is a key provider of physical, geophysical and biogeochemical data to EMODnet Physics, Bathymetry and Chemistry, but we do not currently have the capacity to easily provide biodiversity data to EurOBIS and EMODnet Biology. The lack of additional capacity to handle biodiversity data according to international standards, and to serve them to end-users in an appropriate format, means that they are either hidden in our databases or not prioritised for ingestion by our data managers. While this project will focus on outputting data to the OBIS-ENV format, the work and knowledge acquired will also enable us to develop our capabilities to receive and ingest DwCA data into our systems.
What is the expected impact of your proposed project?
Our project focuses on creating a semi-automated pipeline to facilitate the transfer of biodiversity data from BODC to the Ocean Biodiversity Information System (OBIS) network and European Marine Observation and Data Network (EMODnet). This initiative will allow us to fulfil our goal of improving the FAIRness of our biological data holdings and will enable current and future biodiversity data from UK-funded oceanographic research, as well as data from our parent organization, NOC, to seamlessly reach OBIS, EMODnet, and DTO. As an initial step, we plan to submit plankton abundance and biomass data from at least four datasets to test and demonstrate the effectiveness of the pipeline.
How will this involvement or opportunity enhance your institute's capacity?
We are using this opportunity to share knowledge more widely within our team and train more members of staff in the management of biodiversity data according to international best practices, which will enable them to become leaders in this area of work at BODC. A well-defined workflow and a dedicated trained team will ensure that biological data are processed in-house to the same high standards as other physical and chemical oceanographic data. The proposed project will not only enable BODC to expose data that are currently ‘hidden’ in its databases and archives, but it will also enable BODC to work more closely with NOC scientists to provide a route for them to supply key biodiversity datasets to OBIS. The additional in-house expertise of the OBIS best practices and protocols will also help our role as a major supplier of controlled vocabularies to OBIS.