Update on the Names WG proposal

Dimitris,
I was glad to talk with you at TDWG and see how enthusiastic you are. Thanks for taking the lead on moving this activity along. Having a robust names infrastructure is key to the future of international biodiversity informatics in my opinion. I gave a "Names are Key" talk at the Perth TDWG in 2008.
One thing to consider is recognition of missing names information and development of approaches to deal with it. In particular, when you combine GNA, CoL, and nomenclators, there are still gaps for plants. For instance, there is currently no "nomenclator" for bryophytes; IPNI does not include them. And there are still taxonomic gaps in many vascular plant families in CoL because there are simply no Global Species Datasets for them. The Plant List contains all plant names, but TPL is considered problematic by some in the plant community.
The new World Flora Online project is embarked upon the creation of a "taxonomic backbone" that will include all vascular plant and bryophyte names (about 400,000 species). This is going to take several years to accomplish, but I think it will be a significant component of the Global Names infrastructure in the future as it intends to treat all plants globally using a series of networks of taxonomic experts. There are currently 23 partner institutions working to create the WFO and the taxonomic support network for it. I think some from the WFO project including myself will want to participate in the Names working group.
Thanks,
Chuck
- Show quoted text -From: d.koureas=***@***.***-groups.org [mailto:***@***.***-groups.org] On Behalf Of dkoureas
Sent: Monday, November 03, 2014 11:35 AM
To: ***@***.***-groups.org
Subject: [rda-biodivdataintegr-ig] Update on the Names WG proposal
Dear all,
After our very productive meeting during the BDI IG breakout sessions at the last RDA plenary in Amsterdam, we tried to see how we can enhance and support the Names WG initiative by securing support from other organisations with similar interests. Following a couple of fruitful open sessions at the latest TDWG (Biodiversity Information Standards) meeting in Jonkoping Sweden, it is obvious that the discussion on the need for Global Name services has reached an unprecedented level of maturity. Key stakeholders, including GNA, CoL and nomenclators, are ready to proceed to an unprecedented join of efforts to deliver production-level Global Name service(s).
The envisaged joint RDA/TDWG WG will have a critical role to play as it will act a) as a platform to bring together the key stakeholders, b) identify and engage beneficiaries across Scientific domains, c) develop the technical framework in which our actions should be focused and d) proceed with the deployment of a case study.
Immediate actions to be taken:
- Prepare a short charter for the TDWG executive for securing their agreement in pursuing a joint RDA/TDWG Names WG
- Ask RDA BDI IG contact point for guidance on the process
- Prepare the case statement (as discussed during the last RDA plenary) and propose the formulation of the joint WG
We will initiate a Google doc to work on both the TDWG charter and the RDA case statement. The templates do not match, but hopefully we might be able to re-use most of the content.
Once again, many thanks to everyone for their time and enthusiasm on this.
Kind regards,
Dimitris
--
Dr Dimitrios Koureas
Dept of Life Sciences | Biodiversity Informatics Group
The Natural History Museum London
SW7 5BD, UK