W11 - Workshop of the TDWG Data Quality Interest Group

Unsolicited contributions considered? No

Abstract

The goal of the workshop is to present the advances and the status of the three Biodiversity Data Quality (BDQ) Task Groups (TG) of this Interest Group: TG1 - BDQ Framework, TG2 - BDQ Tests and Assertions, and TG3 - BDQ Use cases, as well as progress on the establishment of a possible fourth Task Group on Vocabularies. The workshop is planned to encourage open discussion on progress and plan the next steps. We will concentrate on specific issues raised during the year, which need to be addressed by the group, and plan next steps, including how to increase participation of other stakeholders and plans toward a TDWG standard on data quality tests and assertions. The distributed nature of data acquisition and digitization, the specific difficulties imposed by some of the data sub-domains, such as taxonomy and geography, make it important to discuss data quality (DQ) in biodiversity so that data made available in portals and other systems can be used for various purposes such as education, science, and decision-making. Many Core DQ tests (more than one-third) are dependent upon having controlled vocabularies and it for this reason we have been working on the establishment of a Task Group to document Vocabularies of Value. Although several initiatives in the biodiversity informatics community have been developing tools and best practices about DQ, there is no consensus related to concepts, metadata, policies, methodologies and tools. The size of DQ check pipelines has also posed challenges for existing methodologies and tools and may need to drive some of the discussion on concepts and policies. The three Task Groups tackle some of the most important issues identified by the attendees of symposia held at the TDWG meetings over the last five years. The group has been able to meet between TDWG meetings to advance its activities. Since TDWG17, TG2 met in Gainesville, Florida, to discuss Tests and Assertions, to finalize the list of Core Tests and to begin documenting and coding the tests. By the time of the Dunedin meeting, it is hoped to have the tests finalized, tested and ready for implementation. The workshop will also look at finalizing two Task Groups (TG1 and TG2) and establishing a new Task Group to plan implementation of the Framework on Data Quality - an outcome of Task Group 1.