Address from the TDWG Chair: highlights of the year and TDWG at a crossroads
David Bloom · Monday plenary programme
The short versionTDWG has had a productive year, but a growing, more diverse community and the rise of AI put it at a crossroads that needs more volunteers, better documentation and more sustainable maintenance and funding.
What this was about
TDWG chair David Bloom reviewed the past year's highlights: ratification of the Darwin Core Data Package, progress of the Biodiversity Data Quality and MIDS standards toward public review, a completed Darwin Core public review affecting the Humboldt and new mineralogy extensions, a new Image Quality and AI Readiness task group, Community Support Fund awards, Living Data 2025 in Bogotá, and a new editor-in-chief for the BISS journal. He then traced TDWG's history from a taxonomy-focused group in the 1980s, through the occurrence-data and portal era, to a new focus on linked open data. He set out current challenges (documentation and archives, participation, volunteer succession, sustainable standards maintenance, finances, and AI) and appealed to attendees to get involved.
Why it matters. It is the organisation's own view of where its standards work stands and what it needs next. It flags upcoming public reviews, new groups and elections that community members can join, and names the structural risks: volunteer burnout, maintenance load and documentation debt.
In the room
- The Darwin Core Data Package (DwC-DP) has been ratified after a multi-year effort led largely by the Darwin Core Maintenance Group.
- The Biodiversity Data Quality Interest Group's standard is heading toward public review, and the Minimum Information about a Digital Specimen (MIDS) standard is about to enter public review.
- The second Darwin Core public review of the year passed all proposals, leading to significant changes to the Humboldt extension and a new mineralogy extension (pending Executive Committee approval).
- A new Image Quality and AI Readiness task group has formed. The TDWG Community Support Fund made four awards totalling just over US$15,000 (mineralogy, sensitive species, invasive species in environmental samples, eDNA).
- Living Data 2025 in Bogotá had more than 900 participants, over 700 of them in person.
- BISS (Biodiversity Information Science and Standards, hosted by Pensoft) has a new editor-in-chief and will expand to peer-reviewed papers. Discounted fees for TDWG members are being considered.
- TDWG's focus has moved from taxonomy/names (1980s) to primary occurrence data and portals such as GBIF and VertNet (2000s, both marking 25 years), and now to linked open data and data packages.
Notable moments
Transcript
Automatically generated captions can contain mistakes, especially in names and technical terms. Times are relative to the room recording.
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Related talks.
An Introduction to the Biodiversity Data Quality Standard (BDQ)
BDQ provides 110 standard, use-case-linked tests so that data quality can be assessed consistently from collection to aggregation.
Session discussion: mineralogy extension and MIDS geology rules
Geology collections now have concrete standards moments to engage with: the mineralogy extension ratification and the MIDS public review.
Metadata matters: perceptions on the implementation of Darwin Core in the biocollections cyberinfrastructure
Standardisation through Darwin Core can mask nuance, and practitioners report complex data, missing guidelines and limited capacity as the main implementation barriers.