The project

The Iberoamerican Infrastructure for Biodiversity Information I3B has been developed as a strategic platform for collaboration and scientific communication. Its purpose is to contribute significantly to make the relevant biodiversity information not only available to the scientific community, but useful for the management and sustainable development of the region. Activities are focused on capability (e.g. workshops, distance education platforms, online resources), and on communication and collaboration infrastructure (e.g. website, biodiversity data development and standard adoption, virtual communities) development.

The I3B activities are structured on four big themes in the field of management and exploitation of the biodiversity information, which were selected in order to produce the maximum benefit. Each of these topics will be coordinated by an experienced institution well connected to leader projects and institutions in that field (consortium members as well) and capable of sharing and coordinating the capability creation. The themes and the leader institutions are the following:

• Collections – SiB Colombia | 2012
• Conservation – INBio Costa Rica | 2013
• Data use and analysis – CONABIO Mexico | 2014
• Digital documentation– CRIA Brazil | 2015

The consortium joins coordination entities from national biodiversity networks, i.e. national GBIF nodes, and reference institutions for the I3B essential topics. It also combines partners of demonstrated ability and experience with partners of a high potential for adopting modern methods and tools, and for collaborating actively in a regional biodiversity data management network.

General goal and specific targets for the thematic network

This proposal objective is focused entirely on the call research priority line: ‘to strengthen the capability of the region to study its biodiversity, the environment conservation and management, through online access to the information about biodiversity’.

Activities are focused on capability creation from two perspectives. On the one hand, creating a solid and sustainable basis for collaboration including specific topics (i.e. informatics networks, metadata, sustainability) by the biodiversity network national coordination entities. On the other hand, involving the maximum number of institutions and countries in the annual workshops. An effort will be made to involve some other participants beyond the consortium. Here, the consortium, i.e. leader institutions in compilation and use of the biodiversity information, plays a key role.

Also, the I3B objective is to promote and facilitate the Iberoamerican countries adhesion to GBIF, as well as to some other local, regional or worldwide initiatives that lead to construct the capability to use and to contribute to this scientific data infrastructure.