6 November 2023
And it does it in style – In Paris, nothing less!
The Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle, located in the City of Light, will host, next 7-8 December, the kick-off event of the DiSSCo Transition project, the eighteen-month interlude that should take the future Research Infrastructure seamlessly into its final Construction Phase.
By DiSSCo CSO
Few among us would disagree that DiSSCo Prepare has been a one-of-a-kind learning experience for all of us. Thirty-six months during which we achieved the necessary technical, data, financial, scientific and organizational readiness to continue building DiSSCo RI. Needless to say, none of this would have been possible without two other DiSSCo-related projects that saw the end of their cycle last February 2023: Mobilise and SYNTHESYS+.
Once achieved sufficient readiness in the variety of areas mentioned above, DiSSCo Transition is the stretch of the road that will allow us to advance in some specific organisational and technical developments that will re-shape the way in which DiSSCo governs itself, interacts with other infrastructures in its same space and steers its technical effort.
An ERIC with strong support
It is relatively simple to understand: No Construction Phase is possible until the future RI has a legal form in place and a group of member states committed to funding it. While DiSSCo’s partners agreed on the ERIC (European Research Infrastructure Consortium) as the most suitable legal form during our last general assembly, the application process is complex and requires a solid agreement among the funding member states. Ensuring their support for the ERIC is arguably DiSSCo’s number one organisational goal during the next eighteen months. More on the ERIC legal form here.
A large group of funding member states is the best way to guarantee sustainability for DiSSCo RI, hence the crucial relevance that engaging and supporting DiSSCo National Nodes will have during DiSSCo Transition.
Photo: DiSSCover is one of DiSSCo’s core services to be further developed during DiSSCo Transition
Core e-services and enhanced interoperability (data standards)
The Digital Extended Specimen system of digital twins will become the central technical piece during the Transition Phase. In fact, it will also work as the basis to further develop a number of e-services deemed essential for the core data architecture of the future Research Infrastructure, including ELViS, DiSSCover, the Collection Digitisation Dashboard and the Specimen Data Refinery. All of them are at the Technical Readiness Level (TRL) that demands continuous development to avoid accumulating “technical debt”. Simply put: a major slowdown in our development of concepts such as the FAIR Digital Object -which lies at the very heart of DiSSCo- might jeopardise DiSSCo’s role as a major driver for the specification process of these types of developments.
Biodiversity data standards such as Darwin Core, ABCD(EFG), IIIF and others are crucial for DiSSCo, insofar as they ensure interoperability among systems and biodiversity information. The Transition Phase of DiSSCo will, however, allow us to continue working with our international colleagues on what you could call the “DiSSCo standards” – MIDS and Latimer Core– that is, the ones that bridge some gaps in the actual catalogue of international standards, and which are also essential for DiSSCo’s open Digital Specimen specification (open DS). You better be ready for a good number of workshops and technical activity during DiSSCo Transition!
If you have reached the end of this post, then you should know by now where the action will be in 2024 – in DiSSCo Transition. Stay tuned for more!
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