16 July 2024
The Greek Ministry for Energy and the Environment has granted 5.7 million euros for a plan to digitise natural collections hosted in universities and scientific institutions all over the country. This crucial push for digitisation also foresees the formation of a digital hub that will bring together eight important collection-holding institutions across the country.
The Natural History Museum of Crete (University of Crete) will coordinate a group of beneficiaries that includes the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, the University of Patras, the National & Kapodistrian University of Athens, the Goulandris Museum of Natural History, the Mediterranean Agricultural Institute of Chania, the Natural History Museum of the Lesvos Petrified Forest and the University of the Aegean.
The digitisation programme, financed through the National Recovery and Resilience Plan “Greece 2.0”, has been a key pursuit of the Natural Environment and Climate Change Organization (OFYPECA), which recognises the different organizational structure of the Greek natural history collections and the need to link them to the standards of DiSSCo.
Upon completion of the project, the digitised natural history collections will become available to a variety of potential users and will form the basis for providing solid scientific knowledge on a series ofcrucial topics, such as documenting biological and geological diversity; understanding the effects of climate change and other environmental threats; determining the impact of invasive species on ecosystems; monitoring changes in environmental resources; and contributing to the country’s adaptation to new technological challenges in the realm of biodiversity research and beyond.
For more information about the digitisation programme for Greek institutions, please contact: Iasmi Stathi, University of Crete stathi@uoc.gr
Do you want to know more about the technical side of DiSSCo? DiSSCo puts different technical knowledge platforms at the scientific community’s disposal:
DiSSCoTech: Get the latest technical posts about the design of DiSSCo’s Infrastructure
DiSSCo Labs: A preview of experimental services and demonstrators by the DiSSCo community
DiSSCo GitHub: Code hosting for DiSSCo software, version control and collaboration
DiSSCo Modelling Framework: A WikiBase tool that is configured to create an abstraction of the DiSSCo data model