Biodiversity Information Science and Standards : Conference Abstract
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Conference Abstract
Policy-Relevant Lists of Species
expand article info André Heughebaert ‡
‡ Belgian Biodiversity Platform, Brussels, Belgium
Corresponding author: André Heughebaert (a.heughebaert@biodiversity.be)
Received: 21 Aug 2023 | Published: 21 Aug 2023
© 2023 André Heughebaert
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Citation: Heughebaert A (2023) Policy-Relevant Lists of Species. Biodiversity Information Science and Standards 7: e111437. https://doi.org/10.3897/biss.7.111437
 Open Access

Abstract

Biodiversity-related regulations often include lists of species in annexes of legal texts. Unfortunately, those publications are often published in PDF with lists in tables in annexes, not suitable for machine reading nor for incorporation into databases, decision making tools or any other information technology tools. This situation undermines efficient data reporting and therefore limits the follow-up of the policies. I tried to publish several species lists*1 from some key European Union legislation (e.g., the Habitats and Birds Directives) to ChecklistBank. Based on my experience, I will discuss the adequacy of existing biodiversity informatics standards to publish policy-relevant lists of species and see how they differ from usual taxonomic checklists. I will also suggest possible improvements to cope with the specificities of these policy-relevant lists.

Keywords

standards, biodiversity, checklist, biodiversity information standards

Presenting author

André Heughebaert

Presented at

TDWG 2023

Conflicts of interest

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
Endnotes
*1

This work is based on my experience in publishing:

annexed species lists to ChecklistsBank with CatalogueOfLife data package and additional material in frictionless data, when necessary.

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