SESSION 1
WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION


Hans d'Orville: Introductory speech



Hans d'Orville, Assistant Director-General for Strategic Planning, UNESCO, gave an introductory speech. He outlined activities of UNESCO in the area of the technologies and the knowledge society and referred to publications which UNESCO has published on the topics.


Lisa Maurer: Welcome



Lisa Maurer, Manager of the ICT-ENSURE project, introduced the project and outlined the scientific and network building activities within the 7th framework programme of the EC. She referred to earlier workshops of the project and gave an outlook about future events.


Thomas Schauer: Welcome



Thomas Schauer, Director of The Club of Rome - European Support Centre, outlined the close connection of the Club to the area of ICT, starting the modelling wotk of "Limits to Growth", which was the first succesful trial to use computer technology for scenario building in 1972, and the report about society in the web by Juan Luis Cebrian, which dealt with aspects of online networks.


SESSION 2
ICT IN BIODIVERSITY MONITORING


Eric Pauwels: e-Infrastructures and Sensor Networks for Biodiversity Research



Centre for Mathematics and Informatics, Amsterdam, introduced in his presentation which was prepared jointly with Wouter Los, the architecture of the Life Watch activity and its data networks. He referred to innovative methods of data acquisition like new sensor systms, computer-assisted photo-ID for observations collected by humans and an UvA GPS bird tracking system. The presentation is available for download.


Christoph L. Häuser: ICT Field Recording Tools and Techniques for Biodiversity Conservation



Christoph L. Häuser, from the State Museom for Natural History in Stuttgart introduced in his speech new approaches from the All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory + Monitoring (ATBI+M) programs under the European Distributed Institute of Taxonomy (EDIT). Every day, more than 100.000 scientific primary biological datasets/records/specimens are newly collected and many of these data are still not recorded digitally. He introduced the Mobile GIS-biodiversity data system and the Mobile GIS/PC-System. The presentation is available for download.


Mihai Adamescu: Long Term Monitoring and Research Network Iternational and National Progress Toward Integration



Mihai Adamescu, from Bucharest University, outlined that a key feature of LTSER is the emphasis on long-term management of data and information as well as the integration between the ecological and social data over space and time scale. Activities are planned with a long-term view, careful consideration is given to data management, locations of measurement plots selection of methods and sampling frequency. Data management in particular is an important issue within the LTER <SER community, and there is much activity to improve methods of long-term data management, data sharing and provision of access to data. The presentation is available for download.


Katrin Väljataga: The Estonian National Environmental Monitoring Programm



Katrin Väljataga, from the Estonian Environment Information Centre, outlined the key problems which were encountered when processing the vast amount of available data: These are the high number of different databases, high number of information systems with different structure, versatile IT solutions and overlapping contents, and the implementation of unified forms. The presentation is available for download.


SESSION 3
INFORMATION PROCESSING AND NETWORKING IN BIODIVERSITY CONSERVATION.


David Patterson: The Encyclopedia of Life



David Patterson, from the Encyclopedia of Life, presented the challenging approach to provide a website for every species on Earth which serves as a portal for links to additional information about the species. He outlined the key problems related to the work, such as the existence of very different names for species and taxonomy disputes. A related problem (referring to data processing) is that of misspellings of names. David Patterson presented also the linkage of activities, for example to portals like flickr. The presentation is available for download.


Nicholas King: GBIF – Building the Biodiversity Informatics Commons to Underpin Sustainable Development



Nicholas King, Executive Director of GBIF, introduced the Global Biodiverstiy Information Facility, its aims and its work like variation in scientific names, common names, classification systems, country names (e.g. language variations), a range of alternatives for content items, e.g. date formats; different scales and units (non-metric). A global names architecture is being developed by GBIF together with partners, and efforts are undertaken to link biodiversity data. The presentation is available for download.


Julie Wyman: Collaboration an Sharing, The Future of IUCN’s Information Management Systems



Julie Wyman, MIS Coordinator at IUCN, illustrated initiatives such as (i) creating a portal dashboard, allowing users to view up-to-date information based on their roles and responsibilities (ii) Providing a single point of entry to a system for all users (via the portal.iucn.org) (iii) the implementation of an integrated infrastructure, based on Microsoft technologies (SharePoint, Active Directory, SQL Server, .NET) to provide a single source of organizational information. More information is available on the website of IUCN.


David Blankman: A Multilingual Metadata Catalog for the ILTER



David Blankman, ILTER, focussed on the problem of linguistic diversity. Not only different languages using the latin alphabet have to be considered when processing world-wide data, but also the Chinese Language - a vast amount of data is available in that language. He outlined the principle importance of machine translation, which gives at least a hint regarding the content of text. However, for proper undersanding, manual translation is needed. The presentation is available for download.


Dave Roberts: Scratchpads: Building Web Communities Supporting Biodiversity Science



Dave Roberts, from the The Natural History Museum in London, presented the concept of scratchpads. They are hosted web sites, with tools for taxonomists. They are intended to encourage community building and serve as tools to facilitate the structuring of data. Presently, there are different site types related to taxon, information and service, regional aspects, societies, Demonstration & tutorial and e-Journals. The presentation is available for download.


SESSION 4
INFORMATION SHARING AND PROCESSING IN PRESENT AND FUTURE AGRICULTURE


Sjaak Wolfert: Information Sharing and ICT in Agri-Food Supply Chain Networks: a View from Different Perspectives



Sjaak Wolfert, Senior President of EFITA, University Wageningen, discussed information sharing in AFSCN. He introduced the context, problem description and conceptual framework and presented some results from research as well as some experiences from the Dutch Kod’ project. Sjaak Wolfert outlined the main challenges for the future and ongoing evelopments. The presentation is available for download.


Georg Kormann: John Deere GreenStar Products – Operator Assist Systems for Sustainable Farming



Georg Kormann, Manager Advanced Engineering at John Deere, gave an overview, how products can support the development of a sustainable agriculture. He presented among others automatic GPS connected machines which operate with a minimum of human efforts. He introduced also sensor networks and and gave an overview on efficiency gains by the new technologies. The presentation is available for download


Ulrich Donath: Networking Agrobiodiversity: SAVE & ELBARN, Web Based Portals to Promote Agrobiodiversity



Ulrich Donath from the SAVE NETWORK, gave an overview of the IT related work of the SAVE Network and introduced to the online database Arca-Net. He outlined how the network is doing monitoring via Agrobiodiversity Net. Ulrich Donath discussed needs for ICT tools while networking agrobiodiversity and introduced to ELBARN (European Livestock Breeds Ark & Rescue Net). The presentation is available for download


Matthias Feilhauer: Activities and Initiatives Related to ICT / Agriculture



Matthias Feilhauer from the European Support Centre of the Club of Rome presented two information technology related activities. A project on monitoring agricultural biodiversity is presenting varieties online via slide shows, thus focussing also on aesthetical aspects. The project has been operating in Georgia in the Gori region. The second activity presented was the European Environmental Education Project. This activity uses information technology for networking online education initiatives, among others in the area of agriculture and gardening. More informaltion is available on the websites

• Agricultural Biodiversity
• European Environmental Education

Hans-Jörg Lutzeyer: Research Priority Setting in Agriculture and ICT - Cooperation tools on the European level



Hans-Jörg Lutzeyer from the European Commission introduced the Standing Committee on Agricultural Research (SCAR) and the Commission Communication on Agricultural Research. He described the Technology Platforms / ERA-Nets and SCAR Collaborative Working Groups. Hand Jörg Lutzeyer introduced to the research work in projects such as Future Farm and presented Call activities for Research Proposals from the European Commission. The presentation is available for download.


Andreas Dengel: iGreen - Intelligent Public Private Knowledge Management



Andreas Dengel from DKFI from the European Commission introduced iGreen which is developping location-bases services and knowledge sharing networks for combining distributed, heterogeneous public as well as private information sources. There are many high-potential application fields for the iGreen platform, such as agriculture, forestry, water supply and distribution, urban development and landscaping, or nature conservation. The presentation is available for download.


Elizabeth Arnaud: The GIGA project: Access to Information Bridging the Conservation and the Use of the Global Crop Diversity



Elizabeth Arnaud from Biodiversity International introduced the GIGA project which aims at (i) providing access to the global accession-level information, (ii) Providing tools to use this information, (iii) Deploy and support best practices in data management for Plant Genetic Resources (PGR) (iv) Allows to obtain germplasm of interest for breeders and pre-breeders and (v) Facilitates rational use of the diversity in the PGR. The presentation is available for download.