ELIXIR - Biodiversity, Food Security and Pathogens - Strategy

This document describes ELIXIR’s Strategy for developing the Biodiversity, Food Security and Pathogens (BFSP) Priority Area within the Science Tier of the ELIXIR 2024-28 Programme. It has been developed by the BFSP Priority Area co-leads, with support from the ELIXIR Hub, and with input and feedback from ELIXIR members across Nodes, Communities, Focus Groups, and Platforms.

The Strategy outlines relevant background information on the importance of BFSP-related research in overcoming societal challenges with a focus on life science data mobilisation and integration activities. Key challenges are summarised, including data brokering services, data interoperability solutions, and analysis tools and services for data exploitation. The Strategy also sets out the scope of BFSP-related activities considering ELIXIR’s role as a Research Infrastructure (RI) for life sciences data and highlights existing and future opportunities in the context of complementary and interconnected national, regional, and global activities and other RIs.

The overarching aims of the BFSP Priority Area are described by defining a vision and mission, addressing the key challenges and contributing to safeguarding planetary health and human wellbeing. The guiding goals are elaborated through objectives centred on federation, FAIR data, analysis, standards, and training, designed to build on ELIXIR’s existing activities and expertise supporting a distributed infrastructure for biological data. Finally, the Strategy summarises the practical implementation of the work plan designed to deliver advances towards sustainable growth in the BFSP domain.