A digital library framework for biodiversity information systems

Biodiversity Information Systems (BISs) involve all kinds of heterogeneous data, which include ecological and geographical features. However, available information systems offer very limited support for managing these kinds of data in an integrated fashion. Furthermore, such systems do not fully support image content (e.g., photos of landscapes or living organisms) management, a requirement of many BIS end-users. In order to meet their needs, these users—e.g., biologists, environmental experts—often have to alternate between separate biodiversity and image information systems to combine information extracted from them. This hampers the addition of new data sources, as well as cooperation among scientists. The approach provided in this paper to meet these issues is based on taking advantage of advances in digital library innovations to integrate networked collections of heterogeneous data. It focuses on creating the basis for a next-generation BIS, combining new techniques of content-based image retrieval and database query processing mechanisms. This paper shows the use of this component-based architecture to support the creation of two tailored BIS systems dealing with fish specimen identification using search techniques. Experimental results suggest that this new approach improves the effectiveness of the fish identification process, when compared to the traditional key-based method.