Swedish Biodiversity Data Infrastructure, SBDI

Biodiversity and ecosystems research are rapidly evolving into big-data sciences, driven by the scientific opportunities provided by new, high-throughput methods of collecting biodiversity data and by the need to improve our understanding of biotas so that we can address societal challenges like the interlinked biodiversity and climate crises.

The Swedish Biodiversity Data Infrastructure (SBDI), including the Swedish node of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), is the key e-infrastructure enabling this transformation in Sweden.

Backed by a consortium of 11 universities and government agencies, SBDI has three focus areas: (1) mobilizing Swedish biodiversity data according to FAIR data and Open Science principles; (2) maintaining and developing a sophisticated platform for integrative analyses of Swedish ecosystems; and (3) providing user support for data-driven biodiversity and ecosystems research.

Tools and services are developed in a cost-effective, global open-source community, where SBDI leads the way in several areas.

Over the coming years, work will focus on: (1) future-proofing the platform for the demands of new massive data streams and machine learning applications; (2) significantly expanding the support to meet the demands of a rapidly growing user community; and (3) continuing to push the international standards and tool development forward in areas of Swedish excellence, such as genomic biodiversity data and systematic monitoring data.