Current projects:

Biodiversity Virtual e-Laboratory (BioVeL) is a project proposal in response to the European Commission’s FP7 2011 Call “INFRA-2011-1.2.1 — e-Science environments”. BioVeL meets the needs of Europe’s Biodiversity Science research community with tools for pipelining data and analysis into efficient workflows, urgently needed to understand biodiversity in a rapidly changing environment. BioVeL customises, deploys and supports the Taverna / myExperiment / BioCatalogue family of software to achieve this. The BGBM supports the setup and deployment of taxonomic services used in BioVeL workflows.

OpenUp! is a 3-year-project in the Information and Communication Technologies Policy Support Programme (ICT PSP) and Competitiveness and Innovation Programme (CIP) of the European Commission starting in March 2011. The participating institutions will provide over one million multimedia objects from the natural history domain to Europeana. OpenUp! is complementary to the eContentPlus project Biodiversity Heritage Library Europe, which is mobilising digitised literature in the natural history domain. OpenUp! is an initiative of members of the Consortium of European Taxonomic Facilities (CETAF) and several European nodes of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). The BGBM is responsible for the overall coordination of OpenUp! and provides highy quality herbarium images to the system.

reBiND aims to develop cost-efficient workflows for rescueing legacy databases from biodiversity sciences which are not integrated in an institutional data curation strategy and are, therefore, at risk of getting lost. The three-year project (2011-2014) is funded by the LIS-Programme of the German Research Foundation (DFG). The original project title is “Entwicklung von Workflows and Softwarekomponenten zur Rettung lebenswissenschaftlicher Primärdaten” (project number GU 1109/2-1).

A Generic Annotation System for Biodiversity Data

The project develops strategies and software for bringing traditional annotation workflows for biodiversity data into the Internet. The software will be based on a prototype annotation system developed by the EU-project SYNTHESYS. The 3-year project (2011-2014) is funded by the LIS-Programme of the German Research Foundation (DFG).

The German Botanical Node has been established at the Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin-Dahlem (BGBM) of the Freie Universität Berlin in close collaboration with ten German botanical institutions and five other partner institutions as part of the German contribution to GBIF International. It represents all flowering plants, ferns, and mosses and also includes algae and protists.
The project is financed by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) within the GBIF-D Programme. Duration of the project is until 31 December 2013.

Germany is one of the founding nations of GBIF. Since the end of 2010 GBIF Germany (GBIF-D) is funded as a joint research project by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). Main objective is the focussed collection and mobilisation of suitable data within Germany's research community and natural history collections as well as of the available observation data according to the aims of the MoU.
The BGBM is coordinating this 6-partner project to ensure the technical and organisational cohesion of the eight Nodes in the German GBIF system. It is financed by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) within the GBIF-D Programme. Duration: until 31 December 2013. The eight Nodes are:

• BGBM Berlin-Dahlem responsible for Coordination
• DSMZ Braunschweig responsible for Bacteria & Archaea
• BGBM Berlin-Dahlem responsible for Plants & Protists
• BSM München responsible for Fungi & Lichens
• MfN Berlin responsible for Insects
• ZSM München responsible for Invertebrates II
• Senckenberg Frankfurt responsible for Invertebrates III
• ZFMK Bonn responsible for Vertebrates
• MfN Berlin responsible for Fossils

The project will develop a soil zoology information system with comprehensive ecological and taxonomic query mechanisms. The system will serve as a publicly available tool for biodiversity sciences and give access to distributed collection data as well as data from literature.
The BGBM supports the incorporation of collection information available through the GBIF-D network and provides the technology to publish specimen information from the soil zoology The project is funded by the Federal Ministry of education and Research. Duration: 2010-2013.

The i4Life project is to establish a Virtual Research Community that will interlink and harmonise the various species catalogues used by six global biodiversity programmes (CBOL, EBI Elixir, EoLGBIF, IUCN, LifeWatch). It builds on the common need of each organisation to specify the entire set of organisms, their growing use of the Catalogue of Life as a common taxonomic resource alongside their own catalogues, and the different expertise that each programme brings to the task. The BGBM will establish i4Life interfaces to LifeWatch and EDIT.
The project is funded under the EU 7th Framework Programme of the European Community for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration , ‘Duration: 2010-2013.

The BGBM establish i4Life interfaces to LifeWatch and EDIT.

ViBRANT will support the development of virtual research communities involved in biodiversity science. The goal is to provide a more integrated and effective framework for those managing biodiversity data on the Web.It is is funded under the EU 7th Framework Programme of the European Community for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration. Duration 2010-2013.

The Biodiversity Heritage Library for Europe (BHL-Europe) is a 3 year project (2009-2012), involving 28 major natural history museums, botanical gardens and other cooperating institutions. The libraries of the European natural history museums and botanical gardens collectively hold the majority of the world’s published knowledge on the discovery and subsequent description of biological diversity. However, digital access to this knowledge is difficult. The objective of the BHL-Europe project is to make available Europe’s biodiversity information to everyone by improving the interoperability of European biodiversity digital libraries.

The BGBM develops and implements between BHL and the EDIT Internet Platform for Cybertaxonomy.

SYNTHESYS aims at consolidating the Information Network of European Natural History Collections.
In the first SYNTHESYS project, the Networking Activity D (NA D), coordinated by BGBM, established the basic, core mechanisms for sharing and working with existing datasets held within infrastructures. Standards and protocols were developed (e.g. ABCDEFG schema for specimen-based earth science collection data) to ensure standardised access to collection data via the specifically designed interfaces (e.g. SYNTHESYS BioCASE Portal).
In the current succeeding project, BGBM coordinates Networking Activity 3 (NA3), which aims at removing barriers to the electronic access and sharing of collections information by providing the state-of-the-art tools for specialist Users and improving the quality of content supplied by the global scientific community through implementation of best practice and the setting of global data standards. NA3 will ensure the integration of the SYNTHESYS IA Beneficiaries into the emerging virtual biodiversity information facilities on the European level.
The BGBM also participates in the German Taxonomic Access Facility DE-TAF of SYNTHESYS.
The project is funded under the EU 7th Framework Programme of the European Community for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration , Infrastructures. Duration: 2009-2013.

Sustained projects:

The overall objective of EDIT is to integrate European taxonomic effort within the ERA and to build a world leading capacity. EDIT will create a European virtual centre of excellence, which will increase both the scientific basis and capacity for biodiversity conservation. EDIT comprises of 8 work-packages, the BGBM leads WP5 and is strongly involved in WP6.

WP5 “Internet platform for cybertaxonomy” aims to demonstrate exemplary integration mechanisms in the area of informatics for taxonomy as well as raise scientific efficiency by significantly reducing of the number and/or duration of steps involved in the taxonomic research and publication/dissemination process.

WP6 "Unifying revisionary taxonomy" includes analyses and syntheses of taxonomic concepts to create new knowledge.

PESI stands for Pan-European Species directories Infrastructure. Authoritative species name registers are not only essential for taxonomy but important for information systems dealing with species of conservation, pest or commercial relevance as well. PESI enhances the quality and reliability of such European registers by integrating community networks of taxonomic experts into a joint work programme. The project develops standardised and authoritative taxonomic metadata.
The BGBM leads WP5 "Coordination and integration of information e-infrastructures", which will integrate three taxonomically authoritative species name registers in Europe, namely the European Register of Marine Species, Fauna Europaea and Euro+Med Plantbase into a joint information system. Furthermore the BGBM participates in WP2 that focuses on the integration of European export networks; funded under the EU 7th Framework Programme of the European Community for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration. Duration: 2008-2011.

LifeWatch is an ESFRI project for establishing a European research infrastructure for biodiversity research, linking ecological monitoring data collected from marine and terrestrial environments with the data in physical collections. The new infrastructure will provide access to the large data sets from different (genetic, population, species and ecosystem) levels of biodiversity together with analytical and modelling tools.
It started with a preparatory phase project funded under the 7th Framework Programme of the European Community for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration, in which the BGBM lead WP5 “Construction Plan” in cooperation with the Fraunhofer IAIS and Cardiff University. The preparatory project has been completed on 31 January 2011. Immediately afterwards, the construction phase of the LifeWatch research infrastructure has started.

An implementation project at the BGBM, high resolution digital camera equipment is used to produce digital images. Type specimens, loans, and some of the important collections such as the Herbarium Willdenow form the priorities for the project. Partially supported by the Association of Friends of the BGBM. and by the Andrew W. Mellon foundation.

A 35-partner research and development project co-ordinated by the BGBM, starting  Nov. 1, 2001.  Financed under the EU's 5th Framework Programme, Research Infrastructures until Jan. 31, 2005, to be carried on by the partnership at least until August 2006. The BGBM is responsible for over-all co-ordination and for the development of the access system. The project is sustained in the framework of SYNTHESYS.

A research and development project (11 partners) coordinated by the University of Reading's Centre for Plant Diversity and Systematics. 1.8.2000 - 30.7.2003. Financed under the European Commission's 5th Framework Programme, Theme 4 (Environment). The BGBM was responsible for software development and provided part of the basic dataset (Med-Checklist). After the conclusion of the EU-funded project, the Secretariat moved to the BGBM and the project was sustained by funding from GBIF, the Mattfeld-Quadbeck foundation, the Association of Friends of the BGBM, and from BGBM resources.

A task group chaired by W. Berendsohn with the aim to maintain the XML-based standard for biological collection data (ABCD), which was developed by a the CODATA Working Group on Biological Collection Data access (2001 to 2002,) and the CODATA Task Group on Access to Biological Collection Data (2003-2006), with support from the Committee on Data for Science and Technology (CODATA) of the International Council of Scientific Unions.

Concluded projects:

A 2-year project establishing the European mirror site for the Global Biodiversity Information Facility GBIF.

Data capture software for German research collections: SPECIFY

A 2-year development project carried out by the BGBM in collaboration with 4 partner institutions. Financed until January 15, 2005 by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research within the GBIF-DE Programme..

European Network for Biodiversity Information ENBI

The BGBM's contribution to ENBI (a EU networking project) consists of the connection of 100 collection databases to the BioCASE network, which provides rich content (ABCD) networking based on the same philosophy as the GBIF collection networking efforts.

A 3-year research and implementation project at the BGBM started Oct. 1, 2001, coordinated by Dr. Regine Jahn, financed by the German Federal Ministry of Research under the BIOLOG Programme.

A one-year development project with the aim of implementing software assisting BioCASE ABCD providers with mapping database attributes to concepts represented in the ABCD schema. Although being primarily focused on ABCD the software will be configurable to work with any content defining XML schema.

A research and development project at the BGBM, 1. 11. 2000 - 28. 2. 2003, financed by the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation of the Ministry of the Environment, with the aim to investigate models for the association of data relevant to nature conservation by means of named taxonomic concepts. 
Its second phase (1. 4. 2003 - 31. 3. 2005), had the aim of bringing the taxonomic core of the BfN's botanical data holdings into a Berlin-Model database and to start with the implementation of the "trasmission engine" for dependable linking between different taxon concepts.
The project is sustained in the framework of SYNTHESYS.

TDWG Task Group on Access to Biological Collection Data (ABCD)

Concerted action project (6 partners) coordinated by the Natural History Museum, London. 1.1.2000 - 31.3.2003. Financed under the EU's 5th Framework Programme, Research Infrastructures. The BGBM was responsible for the development of a prototype for joint access to distributed collection databases.

Proyecto Flora de Cuba - Specimen database

An implementation project at the BGBM, supported by the Association of Friends of the BGBM, implemented a specimen database for the Flora of Cuba project.

A research and implementation project at the BGBM, 1.5.2000 - 30.6.2002, financed by the German Federal Ministry of Research under the BIOLOG Programme.

BGBM-coordinated concerted action project. 1.8.1997-31.12.1999. Financed under the EU's 4th Framework Programme, Biotech. The Access Service is implemented under the follow-up project BioCASE.

BGBM-coordinated concerted action project. 1.8.1993-31.4.1996. Financed under the European Commission's 3rd Framework Programme, DG XII, Biotech. Superseded by BioCISE.