iPlants has a development grant to develop and test the
processes and procedures that would be required during production of an
authoritative, global online list of plant names. Procedures are being
implemented, tested, and refined in an iterative manner. The aims of this pilot
phase are: Output 1: A working prototype of the
iPlants website, populated with a subset of plant name data.
- User requirements analysis to define the demand.
- Mock-up of a prototype website including a single authoritative name per
species, its synonyms and bibliographic references, its global distribution
and, wherever practical, a preliminary assessment of its conservation status,
image(s) to aid identification and links to further information relevant to
plant science and conservation.
Output 2:
Compilation procedures
- Design and documentation of manual compilation procedures, software tools
and automated procedures to allow the collaborating institutions and
individual contributors share data sets and streamline the creation of the
checklist from pre-existing data.
- Tests and feedback on the compilation, processing and data sharing
mechanisms.
- Development and demonstration of how Geographic Information System (GIS)
techniques can be used to produce preliminary conservation assessments.
- A pilot implementation of a system implementing the Distributed Generic
Information Retrieval (DiGIR) system and tailored Darwin Core II data
standards to support calculation of rapid conservation assessments based upon
specimens from the combined collections of the participating institutions.
- Procedural manuals describing specimen databasing, imaging and the
compilation process used.
Output 3: Plan
for Longer-term Project
- Detailed requirements of the software system needed for the entire
iPlants project and an agreement upon how to develop this
software.
- A proposal for the production phase of the iPlants project,
informed by the lessons learned in the pilot phase.
- Agreement on a long-term collaboration between the initial partners and
other key organizations.
- A plan for raising matching funds to ensure that the iPlants
project be sustained through completion and subsequent maintenance of the
checklist.
- Development of a sound management structure and collaboration framework
for the full production phase of the iPlants project.
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