To support the Goal of WP6 to create and mobilise a Community of Practice (CoP) and unite stakeholders involved in the marine biodiversity knowledge value chain the University of Vienna conducted a survey addressing: the domain (i.e. what is the status of biodiversity monitoring), the community (i.e. what are the profiles of stakeholders), the practice (i.e. how do stakeholders work and operate with biodiversity data) and the needs and challenges (i.e. what do different stakeholders require when working with biodiversity data).
Who took part?
The survey was concluded on the 30th of November 2023, having gathered more than 850 responses from a diverse field of stakeholders, including universities and research institutions, national and local governmental institutions, NGOs and IGOs, businesses as well as EU agencies.
We thank all respondents for their time and efforts in answering the questionnaire and sharing the survey.
How does it contribute to the MARCO-BOLO Community of Practice?
The survey enables us to address opinions and the current issues perceived within the biodiversity observation community, leading to more suitable products, tools and recommendations:
“Data is scattered across different platforms and difficult to integrate.”
“Incentives to make data and tools from results operational & long-term funding.”
"Some sort of library of scripts or analysis pipeline for users to standardise data formats."
MARCO-BOLO addresses some of the major challenges and required tools and products mentioned by survey respondents through its work packages.
Recommendations
based on the results of the MARCO-BOLO CoP survey:
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Acknowledge diverse levels of data literacy of stakeholders, ultimately impacting their data needs.
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Address metadata quality and by developing guidelines on how to achieve higher metadata standards.
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03
Strengthen the role of biodiversity data repositories within the data value chain, acknowledging the important role of national and project-based repositories.
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Develop tools and methods to integrate data from different sources to work towards harmonisation.
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05
Incentivise data sharing and increase standardisation via the promotion of Essential Variables, particularly EBVs (Essential Biodiversity Variables) and EOVs (Essential Ocean Variables).