The Global Biodiversity Informatics Outlook helps to focus effort and investment towards better understanding of life on Earth and our impacts upon it. It proposes a framework that will help harness the immense power of information technology and an open data culture, to gather unprecedented evidence about biodiversity and to inform better decisions.

Abstract

Much progress has been made in the past ten years to fulfil the potential of biodiversity informatics. However, it is dwarfed by the scale of what is still required.

The Global Biodiversity Informatics Outlook (GBIO) offers a framework for reaching a much deeper understanding of the world’s biodiversity, and through that understanding the means to conserve it better and to use it more sustainably.

The GBIO identifies four major focal areas, each with a number of core components, to help coordinate efforts and funding. The co-authors, from a wide range of disciplines, agree these are the essential elements of a global strategy to harness biodiversity data for the common good.