Envisaging a global infrastructure to exploit the potential of digitised collections

Quentin Groom (1) , Mathias Dillen (1) , Wouter Addink (2) , Arturo Ariño (3) , Christian Bölling (4) , Pierre Bonnet (5, 6) , Lorenzo Cecchi (7) , Elizabeth Ellwood (8) , Rui Figueira (9) , Pierre-Yves Gagnier (10, 11, 12, 13) , Olwen Grace (14) , Anton Güntsch (15) , Helen Hardy (16) , Pieter Huybrechts (17) , Roger Hyam (14) , Alexis Joly (18, 19) , Vamsi Krishna Kommineni (20) , Isabel Larridon (21) , Laurence Livermore (16) , Ricardo Jorge Lopes (22) , Sofie Meeus (1) , Jeremy Miller (2) , Kenzo Milleville (23) , Renato Panda (24) , Marc Pignal (10) , Jorrit Poelen (25) , Blagoj Ristevski (26) , Tim Robertson (27) , Cristina Rufino (28) , Joaquim Santos (28) , Maarten Schermer (29) , Ben Scott (16) , Katja Seltmann (30) , Heliana Teixeira (31) , Maarten Trekels (1) , Jitendra Gaikwad (20)

1 Plantentuin - Meise Botanic Garden [Belgium]
2 Naturalis Biodiversity Center [Leiden]
3 UPNA - Universidad Pública de Navarra [Espagne] = Public University of Navarra
4 Museum für Naturkunde [Berlin]
5 UMR AMAP - Botanique et Modélisation de l'Architecture des Plantes et des Végétations
6 Cirad-BIOS - Département Systèmes Biologiques
7 Museo di Storia Naturale di Firenze
8 iDigBio
9 ISA - Instituto Superior de Agronomia [Lisboa]
10 MNHN - Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle
11 DGD.C - Direction générale déléguée aux collections
12 CR2P - Centre de Recherche en Paléontologie - Paris
13 Redpath Museum
14 Royal Botanic Garden [Edinburgh]
15 FU - Free University of Berlin
16 NHM - The Natural History Museum [London]
17 INBO - Research Institute for Nature and Forest
18 ZENITH - Scientific Data Management
19 LIRMM - Laboratoire d'Informatique de Robotique et de Microélectronique de Montpellier
20 Friedrich-Schiller-Universität = Friedrich Schiller University Jena [Jena, Germany]
21 Royal Botanic Gardens [Kew]
22 Universidade do Porto = University of Porto
23 IDLab - Internet Technology and Data Science Lab
24 Instituto Politécnico de Tomar
25 Ronin Institute
26 Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski"
27 GBIF - Global Biodiversity Information Facility
28 Universidade de Coimbra [Coimbra]
29 Universiteit Utrecht / Utrecht University [Utrecht]
30 UC Santa Barbara - University of California [Santa Barbara]
31 Universidade de Aveiro

Tens of millions of images from biological collections have become available online in the last two decades. In parallel, there has been a dramatic increase in the capabilities of image analysis technologies, especially those involving machine learning and computer vision. Whilst image analysis has become mainstream in consumer applications, it is still only used on an artisanal basis in the biological collections community, largely because the image corpora are dispersed. Yet, there is massive untapped potential for novel applications and research if the images of collection objects could be made accessible as a single corpus. In this paper, we make the case for building infrastructure that could support image analysis of collection objects. We show that such an infrastructure is entirely feasible and well worth the investment.

Domains: Artificial Intelligence [cs.AI]; Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition [cs.CV]; Machine Learning [cs.LG]; Multimedia [cs.MM]; Modeling and Simulation; Biodiversity and Ecology; Environment and Society

Quentin Groom, Mathias Dillen, Wouter Addink, Arturo Ariño, Christian Bölling, et al.. Envisaging a global infrastructure to exploit the potential of digitised collections. BDJ Open, 2023, 11, ⟨10.3897/BDJ.11.e109439⟩. ⟨hal-03871553⟩