Imagine a global phone book and training center for people who can identify every living species on Earth. Right now, we are losing the experts who know how to name and categorize nature, which is like losing the map to our own planet. This project builds a digital marketplace to find these experts and tools to train new ones using help from everyday citizens.
Companies and governments lack a reliable, centralized way to find and verify species experts, leading to inaccurate biodiversity data. This gap slows down environmental compliance and ecosystem restoration efforts.
An expertise marketplace to index international taxonomic data and an online knowledge platform for species identification.
If you are a biodiversity assessment firm dealing with a lack of specialized species experts for field reports — this project developed an expertise marketplace that connects you to international taxonomic data and specialists. This reduces the time spent searching for rare expertise to validate species in biodiversity hotspots.
If you are an agri-tech company dealing with unidentified invasive species affecting crop yields — this project developed a taxonomic knowledge platform that provides accurate species identification. This ensures your pest control solutions are targeted at the correct biological organism.
If you are a regulatory agency dealing with outdated species lists for land-use permits — this project developed innovative tools and open-access systems for taxonomy. This allows for faster, evidence-based governance and restoration of ecosystems on land and at sea.
Based on available project data, the knowledge and systems are built as open-access resources, suggesting no direct licensing fee for the end-user.
The project scales through a network of 17 partners across 11 countries and integrates citizen science to expand capacity beyond professional researchers.
Based on available project data, the project focuses on open-access knowledge and systems to ensure long-term relevance and integration into governance.
It integrates by networking natural history museums and taxonomic facilities, and aligning with initiatives like DiSSCo and DEST.
The project period runs from 2022-12-01 to 2026-05-31, indicating the tools are currently in development and validation phases.
The consortium is heavily weighted toward public research and academia, consisting of 7 universities and 7 research organizations across 11 countries. There are 0 industry partners and 0 SMEs, indicating that the current output is a public good designed for open-access rather than a commercial product. The leadership by the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences and the inclusion of the European Citizen Science Association suggests a strong focus on institutional capacity and crowdsourced data.
Contact the Institut Royal des Sciences Naturelles de Belgique
Contact us to find the specific taxonomic expert for your environmental project via the TETTRIs marketplace.
