Download CABINPosterCornelisOpenMail - Royal Museum for Central Africa

- Charles Kahindo
Centre Universitaire de Bukavu, RD Congo
- Franck Theeten, Patricia Mergen, Bart Meganck, Garin Cael, Kim Jacobsen, Michel Louette
Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium
Targets
General presentation
In 2007, the Royal Museum for Central Africa started the SABIN(Sub-Saharan African Biodiversity Network) initiative.
Its aim is the development, the installation and the maintenance of a network of databases on biodiversity, in cooperation with scientific
institutions located in Sub-Saharan Africa.
In 2008, this initiative was made concrete with the launch of the CABIN project (Central African Biodiversity Information Network),
which focuses on DR Congo, Rwanda and Burundi.
CABIN is supported by the Belgian General Direction of Development Cooperation.
• Countries: D.R. Congo, Rwanda,
Burundi
• Institutions: Education, Research,
NGOs
• Individuals
The activities encompassed by this project are:
• The conducting of an assessment and a need analysis in Central Africa, in terms of access to information about taxonomy and
biodiversity on the Internet.
CABIN is part of the wider SABIN (Sub-Saharan Africa
Biodiversity Network) initiative which allows possible
collaborations between partners involved in CABIN and
scientists or institutions located in the whole Subsaharan
Africa.
• The identification of specimen collections that may be digitized and later published on Internet.
• Capacity Building: installation of a database and a web portal able to exchange data with the GBIF network (Global Biodiversity
Information Facility), together with the possibility to train and teach staff for the maintenance of this technical infrastructure.
e.g : In September 2008, CABIN contributed to the submission of a proposal
for a joint contribution to an on-line entomological database on comestible
insects with partners based in Benin, RD Congo and France to the FFI
(« Fond Francophone des Inforoutes»/Francophone Fund for the Inforoute).
Contact persons:
• Digitization and publishing of these data will take place in close collaboration with local researchers and researchers from the
RMCA, using internationally recognized Internet protocols and software recommended by the GBIF and TDWG (Taxonomic
Database Working Group).
We are in discussion with the CEDESURK (Centre de Documentation de l'Enseignement Supérieur, Universitaire et de la
Recherche à Kinshasa) for the implementation of the project. CEDESURK is a knowledge centre based at Kinshasa University ,
which is co-funded by the VLIR-UOS (Flemish Interuniversity Council- Universitary Development Cooperation) and the CUD
(Walloon Universitary Commission for Development Cooperation).
It organizes IT seminars and training sessions gathering scientists and technician from Congolese, Rwandan and Burundian
universities and has the technical infrastructure to host big databases and publish them on the Internet. CEDESURK already
collaborates with the Geological and anthropological department of the RMCA
CEDESURK is involved with the telephone operator Celtel in the Eb@lé project which seeks to connect 9 universities from the
Western, Southern and Eastern part of the Congo (UNIKIN, FCK, UPN, ISTA & UPC in Kinshasa, UL in Mbanza-Ngungu, UNILU in
Lubumbashi, UNIKIS Kisangani & UCB in Bukavu) in a common Internet network, by using relay stations for cell-phones as carrier.
Charles Kahindo ([email protected]): Regional TDWG secretary
Patricia Mergen ([email protected]): Promotor CABIN
Franck Theeten ([email protected]): Coordination and implementation
RMCA Biodiversity Information Unit: Collaborate to implementation
RMCA ICT and Metafro: Infrastructure support
Link:
http://www.africamuseum.be/research/zoology/research/zoology/vertebrates/SABINCABIN/index_html
Contact with other organizations + interest for geologists
GBIF is an international non-profit organisation that focuses on making scientific data on biodiversity available via
the Internet using web services. These webservices are decentralized so that each contributing institution retains
the full Intellectual property on its data. Some member countries have nodes at national level providing the
possibilty to host data from institutions which don't have the technical infrastructure for publishing their data on the
Internet.
One of the aims of CABIN is to set up in Central Africa a regional node able to connect data to GBIF and other
organisations. In this prospect, it draws its inspiration from the methodolgy used by the GBIF during the creation of
its Tanzanian node.
In September 2008, the RMCA also installed a mirror site of the main GBIF portal, which would be replicated at the
CEDESURK in 2009 or 2010 and form the first step of CABIN.
This website can be reached at http://gbif.africamuseum.be .
What does this kind of infrastucture can offer to geologists and conversationists involved in mining exploitation?
It offers an interface for geographical searches (based on gazetter informations and/or geographical
coordinates) or chronological searches on biodiversity databases disseminated across the world, and could
provides aid for decision making process when creating new mining concessions. This information could also help
scientists and conservationists from Central Africa to estimate the information gap data for some areas or specific
taxas and when determining which areas need ecological surveys.
Contributors to GBIF (such as the HerpNet program) also developped methodologies and software to manually
or semi-automatically infer georeferenced data for specimen coming from old collections, depending on their
metadata and field data. Such methodolgies could be be applied to old geological collections in order to estimate
the geographical accuracy of old samples or observations.
The webservices used by GBIF are based on XML standards (such as DarwinCore and ABCD). These standards
feature Geographical extensions which could be re-used for geological gazetteer.
GBIF uses a Web Service called TapirLink which is schema-independant,
and could serve XML schemas for Geological data. CABIN promotors are
also familiar with the Web Map Service (WMS) standard wich is used by
many Geological databases (such as OneGeology) and could be a possible
partners for the implementation of this kind of software in Central Africa?
General Structure of the technical implementation:
Structure of the portal website:
=>Tasks and services encompassed
within SABIN/CABIN
Contact info:
[email protected]
[email protected]
Website:
Symposium “The Quest for Natural Resources in Central Africa. The Case of the Mining Sector in DRC »
http://www.africamuseum.be
Royal Museum for Central Africa, December 8th – 9th, 2008
http://www.ubuntunet.net/lusaka/ebale20
08.pdf