Open data for biodiversity
Taiwan’s open and democratic society and the strong and active civic consciousness of its people provide tremendous energy for the promotion of biodiversity.
Take open data for example. Ecological research, conservation work, and government policymaking and implementation all require scientific information and data. The Global Biodiversity Information Facility is currently the largest organization in the world endeavoring to promote openness and international interconnectedness of global biodiversity data. Shortly after the GBIF was founded, Taiwan joined as an associate participant (under the name of Chinese Taipei), and set up the Taiwan Biodiversity Information Facility (TaiBIF), which serves as an important node in the Asian region.
Moreover, in 2021 the Academia Sinica’s Biodiversity Research Center, the Construction and Planning Agency, the Ocean Conservation Administration, the Forestry Bureau, the Taiwan Forestry Research Institute, and ESRI formed the Taiwan Biodiversity Information Alliance (TBIA), which promotes the use of Creative Commons or other public licensing methods to make data held by government agencies available to the general public.
Open data benefits both governmental and non-governmental actors. Members of the TBIA secretariat, who have backgrounds in the life sciences, all express the same view: Field studies are labor-intensive and time-consuming, and even the most assiduous researcher can at most accumulate several decades’ worth of data. But biological research often requires information spanning many decades or even centuries to be able to see trends and changes. “If we can collate data collected by others, we can fill in the gaps across both time and space,” says Melissa Liu, content manager at TaiBIF.
The founding of the TBIA demonstrates the determination of Taiwan’s government to pursue a policy of open data, while also helping the general public to understand the achievements of government data collection and providing objective data on which to base public policy. If this data conforms to defined data standards it can also be uploaded to TaiBIF, which not only will make it accessible via GBIF but also will raise the visibility of the information.
TEIA deputy secretary-general Sun Hsiu-ju advocates for the environment in the hope of planting a seed for the next generation.
The Taiwan Environmental Information Association has been mobilizing volunteer divers to survey the health of coral reefs in the seas around Taiwan. (photo by Hsiao Yi-chen, courtesy of TEIA)