The main outcome is constituted by the development of services to support biodiversity assessments based on the production and mobilization of Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBV) data. EBV development includes (1) the adoption of the EBVs approach by a wider community of biodiversity and data scientists in order to increase the number of compliant datasets, including the use of in-situ data from stakeholders involved in mySITE; (2) Taking the GEO BON EBV-Portal into a fully operational infrastructure facilitating access to EBV datasets under FAIR principles and (3) Uptake by user communities involved in biodiversity policy and assessments, facilitating the discovery and use of the data through developing a new Information Standard and providing access to basic analysis tools for assessing biodiversity change. Among these is the upgrade of the GEO BON EBV portal with web services that can be linked to and visualized in EcoSense for all protected area / long-term monitoring sites.

12/2020 Implementation of the Minimum Information Standards for promoting compliance with GEO Data Sharing and Data Management Principles and increase the number of services to end-users (alpha stage) for internal use only

12/2021 Publication of the Minimum Information Standards and eventually endorsement by relevant standard authorities (e.g. OGC and TDWC) (beta stage) for public use

12/2021 Provide services for interaction with other web services (EcoSense - mySITE, GEO Catalog) (alpha stage) and for internal use only

04/2023 Fully operational EBV Portal demonstrating the mobilization and uptake of EBV data at the local (EcoSense - mySITE), National, and European level (beta stage) with public access

Time series of spatial biodiversity datasets produced from the integration of remote sensing and in/situ data. Provenance information for these datasets allowing for reproducibility under FAIR principles eb-based application. New data and metadata standard.

All web-based services are in-house developments without any European platform support

Web-based application (EBV Data Portal)

Users include, among others, public agencies and the private sector involved in assessing changes in biodiversity and responding to these changes from the local and regional to the global level.

The Convention on Biological Diversity’s (CBD’s) Post-2020 Strategic Plan for Biodiversity envisages that “by 2050, biodiversity is valued, conserved, restored and wisely used, maintaining ecosystem services, sustaining a healthy planet and delivering benefits essential for all people”. Although 193 parties are negotiating these goals, there is little organised or coherent infrastructure in place to coordinate the collection of the biodiversity information necessary to monitor progress towards the objectives of the CBD Strategic Plan. By scaling-up the EBV concept, this Pilot provides comparable information relevant for assessing and monitoring the state of biodiversity and ecosystems by the Parties.

In addition, the European Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 establishes the need for improving monitoring mechanisms and developing sets of agreed indicators. By providing spatiotemporal and comprehensive data across Europe, myVariable can contribute to this goal.

Standardized and valorized EBV data products covering different spatial scales from local to regional (such as some of the sites included in Pilot mySITE) to European and Global.

Data will be open access, it will follow the GEOSS Data Management Principles, and will be accessed via the GEO BON Portal, the EcoSense Portal developed under myECOSYSTEM and, eventually, some of the products may be used as a demonstration of concept for the GEO Knowledge Hub

The GEO BON Data Portal will provide web services allowing to retrieve the data under a new standard from other platforms including the GEO Catalogue. This will be addressed during 2021 as shown in the timeline.