About the National Biological Information Infrastructure About the National Biological Information InfrastructureJanuary 1995
The mission of the National Biological Service (NBS) is to work with others to provide the scientific understanding and technologies needed to manage the Nation's biological resources. A fundamental part of this mission is to make data and information on biological resources more accessible for more people to use in making resource management decisions. A key element in accomplishing this objective is development of a national partnership for sharing biological information: the National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII).
The NBII will provide information about and access to biological data and information that is maintained by Federal, State, and local governments and in non-government organizations. This will be accomplished through an interconnected electronic network of the many distributed biological data bases and information sources maintained by the NBS and its NBII partners. In addition to biological data, software tools will also be identified and available, to help users to analyze, integrate, and display biological data and information. The NBII will also point to sources of biological expertise; people and organizations that users can contact to get advice and assistance on finding and understanding biological data.
There is extensive existing data and information on our biological resources located in files, publications, and computers in the public and private sectors, and in universities, libraries, and museums around the country (and the world). Recent advances in computer and telecommunications technology have made it easier to access those data and information that are automated. In many cases, however, availability of different data sources may not be fully known by the people who would be able to use the information.
Also, much useful information, such as information on museum biological specimens, is not currently available in an automated format and therefore is not easily accessible. In addition, integration of data or information from two or more different sources to help answer questions does not always occur because the data from two or more different sources can not be easily compared or combined.
Through the NBII, we will help identify sources of biological data and information; and to develop and adapt the tools, standards, and procedures to allow people to more easily find and retrieve the biological data and information they need, to integrate or combine data and information from different sources, and to apply data and information to actual resource management decisions. By cataloging and describing existing biological data and information, NBII will also help government agencies and non-government organizations avoid duplicative data collection, so that they can focus their efforts on important biological data "gaps."
The goal of the NBII is to establish a distributed federation of biological data and information sources, relying on a network of partners and cooperators to make the data they generate and/or maintain available to others through this federation. NBS-produced data and information constitute only a fraction of the total set of biological data and information in the country. Partnerships, between NBS and other Federal and State agencies, and with non- government organizations, therefore are essential to the successful implementation of NBII. NBS currently has partnership agreements with several Federal agencies, inside and outside the Interior Department, with several States, and with private organizations such as the Association of Systematics Collections, Champion Paper Corporation, and Natural Heritage Network. NBS is continually seeking to involve more potential partners in helping to plan, design, and implement the NBII concept.
The NBII will have 3 principal components that will be implemented sequentially: the Biological Data Directory, Clearinghouse, and Distributed System. The NBII Directory points users to biological data bases and information sources, both within NBS and from other agencies or organizations. Guides on how to search ("scout") for sources for additional information, how to use the network tools that are available (WAIS, MOSAIC, List Servers, FTP Servers, OCLC, etc.) and how to find experts and "centers of excellence" in the biological sciences are also included or referenced.
Through the NBII Clearinghouse, users will be able to search a distributed network of computers to see descriptive information (metadata) about various biological data bases. Users can then contact the source of a given data base to acquire actual data that meet their needs. A key to the implementation of this component of NBII will be the development and use of an accepted set of metadata standards (i.e., standard descriptors about data bases) by NBS and our cooperating partners.
The Interactive Distributed System is the ultimate goal of the NBII. In this phase of implementation, both the Directory and the Clearinghouse will be fully functional and, additionally, users will be able to directly access, retrieve, and combine biological data from different sources. Data will actually be served by many different organizations at different locations, but NBII users will be electronically connected to the source data bases (i.e., a "virtual" data base). Agreement among the NBII partners on standards for biological data and metadata and for data communications will be fundamental to the implementation of the NBII distributed system. Also key will be the availability of new types of analytical tools (e.g., modeling, display) to allow users to work at their own local computer with the actual data from several different sources, to use software tools which actually reside at the remote site(s) of the source data, or to work collaboratively with others at remote sites by using the network.
The NBII will include biological data and information from Federal, State, and local government agencies; from universities, museums, and libraries; and from private corporations and conservation organizations. NBS will make its own biological data bases, such as the data in the GAP Analysis Program and data from the National Bird Banding laboratory, available through the NBII, and will work with our partners to identify and include other important biological data and information.
Examples of existing biological data sources to be included in the NBII are the National Wetlands Inventory data base of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, biological data from the Environmental Protection Agency's EMAP program, and data from State natural heritage inventories or State fish and game data bases. Many of these data and information bases are already being served on the Internet. NBII's contribution will be to direct more potential "customers" to these data, and to make it easier for people to compare/combine data from one data base with another. In addition, NBS will work with institutions, such as natural history museums, herbaria, or libraries, to help include information in the NBII on their collections and holdings, much of which may not currently be available in electronic format.
People will be able to use the NBII in a wide variety of ways, depending on their information needs and the equipment they have available. NBII users will cover a wide spectrum, from scientific specialists to students. The goal is to provide a variety of avenues through which people can access the network, see what is there, and get back what they want. Users will not have to be computer-skilled, in fact, users will not even have to have a computer. Some information will be available over the phone (via "800" numbers), through the mail, or by fax. Information can be provided in "hard copy" form, in paper, on CD-rom, or diskette. NBII technical support specialists will be available to help users locate and retrieve the specific information they need.
Users who access NBII directly over the Internet will use Internet's searching tools (such as Mosaic or Gopher) to find the data and information they need. They may then log into the source computer for these data and perform specific queries or analyses. Alternatively, they may choose to copy data out of the source computer onto their own local computer.
There are several efforts already underway to create aspects of a national (or international) information infrastructure for biology by increasing access to distributed biological information resources. This includes programs of the Federal agencies, such as EPA's Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Program (EMAP), NASA's EOS-DIS, the Government Information Locator System (GILS), and the Human Genome Project; State government programs such as the California Environmental Resources Evaluation System (CERES); and activities of private organizations such as Natural Heritage Network.
The objective of the NBII is to work with, draw on, support, and facilitate the linkage of these systems and activities into an overall national "federation" (i.e., the infrastructure). The NBII represents the biological component of the overall National Information Infrastructure, and also complements the parallel National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI).
The NBS has developed a detailed implementation plan for the NBII and has established an NBS-wide NBII implementation task force. NBS has established formal partnerships with the States of Arizona, California, Illinois, Maryland, and North Carolina, and with Natural Heritage Network and the Association of Systematics Collections to include cooperation in sharing biological data and information via the NBII. NBS has also joined the National Information Infrastructure Testbed. Testbed members may use the NBS Great Plains ecosystem initiative as a pilot to develop and test future NII/NBII data communications and analysis technologies.
Information and Technology Services National Biological Service MS 3660 1849 C St. N.W. Washington, D.C. 20240 (202) 482-3980 Fax: (202) 273-0825 e-mail: Anne_Frondorf@nbs.gov
