Contemporary Challenges in Ambient Data Integration for Biodiversity Informatics

Biodiversity informatics (BDI) information is both highly localized and highly distributed. The temporal and spatial contexts of data collection events are generally of primary importance in BDI studies, and most studies are focused around specific localities. At the same time, data are collected by many groups working independently, but often at the same sites, leading to a distribution of data. BDI data are also distributed over time, due to protracted longitudinal studies, and the continuously evolving meanings of taxonomic names. Ambient data integration provides new opportunities for collecting, sharing, and analyzing BDI data, and the nature of BDI data poses interesting challenges for applications of ADI. This paper surveys recent work on utilization of BDI data in the context of ADI. Topics covered include applying ADI to species identification, data security, annotation and provenance sharing, and coping with multiple competing classification ontologies. We conclude with a summary of requirements for applying ADI to biodiversity