Synthesis of systematic resources

Objective

European natural history collections are a critical infrastructure for meeting the most important challenge humans face over the next 30 years – mapping a sustainable future for ourselves and the natural systems on which we depend – and for answering fundamental scientific questions about ecological, evolutionary, and geological processes. Since 2004 SYNTHESYS has been an essential instrument supporting this community, underpinning new ways to access and exploit collections, harmonising policy and providing significant new insights for thousands of researchers, while fostering the development of new approaches to face urgent societal challenges. SYNTHESYS+ is a fourth iteration of this programme, and represents a step change in evolution of this community. For the first time SYNTHESYS+ brings together the European branches of the global natural science organisations (GBIF, TDWG, GGBN and CETAF) with an unprecedented number of collections, to integrate, innovate and internationalise our efforts within the global scientific collections community. Major new developments addressed by SYNTHESYS+ include the delivery of a new virtual access programme, providing digitisation on demand services to a significantly expanded user community; the construction of a European Loans and Visits System (ELViS) providing, for the first time, a unified gateway to accessing digital, physical and molecular collections; and a new data processing platform (the Specimen Data Refinery), applying cutting edge artificial intelligence to dramatically speed up the digital mobilisation of natural history collections. The activities of SYNTHESYS+ form a critical dependency for DiSSCo - the Distributed System of Scientific Collections, which is the European collection communities ESFRI initiative. DiSSCo will undertake the maintenance and sustainability of SYNTHESYS+ products at the end of the programme.

Field of science

/social sciences/economics and business/economics/sustainable economy
/natural sciences/computer and information sciences/artificial intelligence
/humanities/history and archaeology/history
/natural sciences
/natural sciences/computer and information sciences/data science/data processing

Funding Scheme

RIA - Research and Innovation action

Coordinator

NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM

Address

Cromwell Road
SW7 5BD London
United Kingdom

Activity type

Public bodies (excluding Research Organisations and Secondary or Higher Education Establishments)

EU contribution

€ 1 561 559,53

Objective

Field of science

Programme(s)

Topic(s)

Call for proposal

Funding Scheme

Coordinator

Participants (31)

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