Standard Reference Database : ITV-CORE

Decisions demand data, and poor quality data can lead to wrong, inaccurate, or late decisions. The way in which data is collected, stored and shared will reverberate in its quality and accuracy, consequently, reflecting on the ability to understand the aspects they represent. The private sector acting in the environmental area demands objectivity and assertiveness, and that is why it is essential to treat the data that subsidize conservation and restoration actions with exceptional care. To assess the state of biodiversity and environmental impacts, extensive field surveys are often required; for this, independent service providers are hired, who are specialized in obtaining a variety of types of information. Consequently, different collection methods are applied, and almost always methodological and formatting inconsistencies can be found in the resulting data. For the subsequent integration of this data into databases, it will be necessary to extract, adjust and standardize them, generating an entirely new demand, consuming time, human effort and financial resources. In addition, this demand also increases the risk of misinterpretation, typing and digitization errors, which can compromise quality, or even lead to loss of information. The standardization of data used in the survey, inventories, storage and sharing processes is a strategic solution to increase efficiency, reduce costs and risks of information degradation and loss. Furthermore, it brings a number of other benefits, such as the transformation of the analogic field recording system (field notebooks) to an entirely digital format, with the integration of cameras, tablets, dataloggers, and other widely available technologies. When it comes to preparing a recommendation for the standardization of data in a comprehensive and inclusive way, we mapped the biodiversity data frequently used by researchers from the Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services group at The Instituto Tecnológico Vale. Through this mapping, we seek to understand the types of data that already exist, how they have been used, stored and shared in databases, but also their convergence and peculiarities. With the participation of researchers, we seek to develop and validate a preliminary system of terms and metadata, including recommendations for best practices, aiming to improve the use of environmental and biodiversity data. The mapping showed a series of correspondences regarding the types of data used by the BES-ITV group, especially in the data applied in studies of Conservation and Restoration, Landscape Ecology, Genomics and Radio Frequency Identification. But also a great diversity of research topics (Total=29), focusing on six large biological groups, aspects that demonstrate the high multidisciplinary and wide coverage of environmental, ecological, genetic and biodiversity data used by the group. Based on these results, a system of terms and metadata is being developed, as well as the idealization of a modular system for the automatic generation of field digital spreadsheets, in order to simplify data collection through exclusively digital means.