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biological-information infrastructure might encompass, and suggestions about how it might be achieved.

Background

In the United States, NBII is the primary mechanism whereby biodiversity and ecosystem information is made available to all sectors of society. It is the biological component of the National Information Infrastructure and is the framework that connects US activities to the global biodiversity and ecosystem research enterprise. Its meaning is expansive and intended to convey the idea that an information infrastructure comprises not only computers, networks, and the like, but also the information, policies, standards, and people who use it. Initiation of the NBII was one of the primary recommendations made by the 1993 National Research Council report A Biological Survey for the Nation (NRC 1993).

Because our fate and economic prosperity are so completely linked to the natural world, information about biodiversity and ecosystems—as well as the infrastructure that supports it—is vital to a wide range of scientific, educational, commercial, and government uses. Most of this information now exists in forms that are not easily accessed or used. From traditional paper-based libraries to scattered databases and physical specimens preserved in natural-history collections throughout the world, our record of biodiversity and ecosystem resources is uncoordinated, and large parts of it are isolated from general use. It is not being used effectively by scientists, resource mangers, policy-makers, or other potential client communities (National Performance Review 1997; NRC 1997).

Research activities are being conducted around the world that could improve our ability to manage biological information. In the United States, the Human Genome Project is producing new medical therapies and developments in computer and information science. Geographic information systems (GISs) are expanding the ability of federal agencies to conduct data-gathering and data-synthesis activities more responsibly and creating opportunities for commercial partnerships that can lead to new software tools. The National Spatial Data Infrastructure (http://nsdi.usgs.gov) is improving the management of geographic, geological, and satellite datasets; the Digital Libraries (http://www.cise.nsf.gov/iis/dli/home.html) projects are beginning to produce useful results for some information domains; and the High-Performance Computing and Communications Initiative (http://www.hpcc.gov) has enhanced some computation-intensive engineering and science fields.

But little attention has been paid to computer and information science and technology research in the biodiversity and ecosystem domain. We must produce mechanisms that can efficiently search through terabytes of Mission to Planet Earth satellite data and other biodiversity and ecosystem datasets, make correlations among data from disparate sources, compile those data in new ways, analyze and synthesize them, and present the results in an understandable and usable manner. Despite encouraging advances in computation and communication performance in recent years, we are able to perform these activities on only a very small scale. We can, however, make rapid progress if the computer and