ICEDIG

Addressing today’s global environmental challenges requires access to significant quantities of data. This holds especially true for the natural sciences, where one rich data trove remains unearthed: The European scientific collections. They jointly hold more than 1.5 billion objects, representing 80% of the world bio- and geo-diversity. With only 10 % of these objects digitised, their information remains vastly underused, thus impeding potential applications of this critical scientific resource.

ICEDIG was the first step to help tackle the complex challenge of digitising natural science collections and providing access to collections data via DiSSCo. In support of DiSSCo, ICEDIG has devised the necessary plans and capacity enhancements to make the future Research Infrastructure for natural sciences collections operational.

It was the goal of ICEDIG to devise the structural pillars of DiSSCo by setting up the necessary technological, socio-cultural, and organisational features to enable the operation of a unified access point to bio and geo-diversity data. ICEDIG has paved the way to mass digitisation of European natural science collections and the subsequent access to all related data in a harmonised and integrated manner across Europe.

The recommendations of the ICEDIG project have been published in a conceptual design blueprint for DiSSCo (deliverable D8.1).

For more information visit the ICEDIG website.