Introducing ICEDIG. Innovation and consolidation for large-scale digitisation of natural heritage. Hannu Saarenmaa, Kari Lahti & Leif Schulman

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1 Introducing ICEDIG Innovation and consolidation for large-scale digitisation of natural heritage Hannu Saarenmaa, Kari Lahti & Leif Schulman ICEDIG Opening Conference 6 March 2018 Helsinki, Finland Professor Leif Schulman, Director

2 ICEDIG is for Pan-European Research Infrastructure, in the making. DiSSCo will be developed through a series of projects. ICEDIG is a Design Study for DiSSCo, in the area of digitisation of scientific collections.

3 ICEDIG paving the way for large-scale digitisation of natural heritage

4 ICEDIG challenge Premise: Only around 10 % of natural sciences collections have been digitally catalogued and 1-2 % imaged Scale and complexity of digitising and providing access technological, socio-cultural, and organisational capacity enhancement required. Just a group? Challenges of efficiently digitising and seamlessly accessing the collections new research and technological innovation required ICEDIG will design all necessary technical, financial, policy and governance aspects for developing and operating DiSSCo (prototypes, blueprints, novel workflows, new industry partnerships, and citizen involvement models) Tray of mayflies (Ephemeroptera) with bounding boxes from the Inselect programme at NHM ANA LEIF CASINO, SCHULMAN, CETAF FI

5 Vision 1.5 billion specimens in European scientific collections DiSSCo needs to digitise a significant part of them (such as 50%), in a foreseeable future (such as 20 years)... This requires digitising million specimens each year, which is 10 times the current rate. How to do that requires innovation of new ways of digitising, and consolidation and scaling up what already works.

6 Professor Leif Schulman, Director

7 Professor Leif Schulman, Director

8 Innovation and Consolidation The best available mass-digitisation systems for herbarium collections can process 5,000 specimens/day. That is 1 million/year. Herbaria contain about ¼ of all specimens. 2D objects. Consolidation and scaling up the existing technology is the approach. The best available mass-digitisation systems for pinned insects can process 500 specimens/day... Insect collections contain more than ½ of all specimens. Most insects are 3D objects. Innovation of new digitisation technologies is required.

9 ICEDIG Innovation and Consolidation for large scale DIGitisation of natural heritage Call: H2020-INFRADEV (Development and long-term sustainability of new pan-european research infrastructures) Submission: 29 March 2017, as a Research and Innovation Action (RIA) Approval: 14.5/15 p., 1 st of 39 proposals; GA Nov 2017 (777483) Term: Jan 1 st 2018 to March 31 st 2020 (27 months ) Budget: 2.99 M Objective: To promote new research and technological innovation required to solve the challenges of digitising and seamlessly accessing over one billion objects, which will form a data pool of petabyte scale. Design Study for DiSSCo. Coordinator: Finnish Museum of Natural History LUOMUS Partners: Coordinator + 11 partners from 6 other European countries, including CETAF and industry Professor Leif Schulman, Director

10 ICEDIG work packages and their linkages DiSSCo preparatory/ implementation phase Technology stream: Innovations to digitise a significant part of the 1.5 billion objects in a foreseeable future, at acceptable cost, and to manage petabyte-size data. Consolidation stream: Develop a shared governance model to support all aspects of service unification (implementation of open access principles, incentive schemes, planning and prioritisation, capacity development, etc.) Support stream: Ensure embedding the project into the infrastructure conceptual and governance design; administration; communication. ANA LEIF CASINO, SCHULMAN, CETAF FI

11 Examples of technical studies to be carried out (1/3) Mass digitisation techniques (WP3) Herbarium sheets: review of state-of-the-art, gather lessons learned, give recommendations Pinned insects: possibilities to speed up techniques to fold; test new approaches (robotics, multispectral imaging, X-ray) Liquid samples and skins and other vertebrate material: investigate suitability of available techniques; probe researcher needs Microscope slides: possibilities to speed up techniques 3D: possibilities for automation Professor Leif Schulman, Director

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13 Examples of technical studies to be carried out (2/3) Data capture & quality (WP4) Methods for automated text digitisation: Optical Character Recognition Crowdsourcing Commercial outsourcing Interoperability with collection management systems Data mobilisation (WP5) Transcription sites on the internet: review of available source codes Small collections: specification of work for citizen associations; pilots Professor Leif Schulman, Director

14 Examples of technical studies to be carried out (3/3) Data infrastructure (WP6) Digital Objects as surrogates for the physical collection items An architecture is needed Data Management Plans For ICEDIG DiSSCo Services Evaluation of EU-level data infrastructures EUDAT, EGI National cloud infrastructures Commercial cloud infrastructures Zenodo Professor Leif Schulman, Director

15 Data flow and use cases: different infrastructure requirements in different phases of data life cycle? Conveyordriven imaging station Digital Objects in the European (Global) Open Science Cloud Citizen&OCR transcription portal Collection management system Science users world-wide Long-term preservation Storage Storage Storage Storage Storage

16 Digital Objects (DO) surrogates for the physical collection items

17 Examples of policy / legal issues to be covered Prioritisation in digitisation: criteria Management of digitisation progress European network of digitisation factories, and/or in-house facilities? Data management and distribution: IPR, RRI, open access policies, privacy, ABS Technical standards: research object identifiers, data attribution/citation, cloud hosting legislation Common digital research agenda Professor Leif Schulman, Director

18 How ICEDIG interfaces with the community? Through CETAF, SPNHC, TDWG, GBIF,... Linking with parallel initiatives (ALA, idigbio,...) Round Tables every 3 months (to gain insights from industry and stakeholders) All-Hands Meetings every 6 months (open to stakeholders) Opening Conference and Final Conference Professor Leif Schulman, Director

19 To conclude... ICEDIG is a Design Study it will not implement anything operational, but will test ideas, technologies and approaches. ICEDIG will create plans for the construction of DiSSCo. Input and advise from the scientific community, other users, industry, policy makers, and citizens will be needed throughout the project. Professor Leif Schulman, Director

20 Demonstrations during 5-7 March Conveyor-driven mass-digitisation of pinned insects During lunch break Conveyor-driven mass-digitisation of herbarium sheets At the basement of Topelia-building, Unioninkatu 38, Wednesday at 8:00-8:45

21 8:00-8:45 9:00-12:00