Global Biodiversity Data Integration Frameworks

Abstract

Global biodiversity data -- species occurrence records, population abundance time series, functional trait measurements, remote sensing habitat products, and phylogenetic trees -- are distributed across hundreds of repositories, databases, and monitoring programmes with heterogeneous formats, taxonomies, coordinate reference systems, and access policies that impede the integrative analyses needed for global biodiversity assessment. The fragmentation of biodiversity data infrastructure reflects the historically siloed development of ecological databases by research groups, national programmes, and international organisations with different scientific communities, funding streams, and technical standards. This review evaluates the current global biodiversity data infrastructure -- covering 18 major data repositories across five data types -- against FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) data principles, and proposes a federated integration framework capable of enabling cross-database analyses at the scale required for KM-GBF monitoring and IPBES global assessments. GBIF achieved the highest FAIR compliance score (87.4/100) followed by TRY (78.4) and OBIS (74.7). The 247-node biodiversity data network shows a mean integration completeness of only 38.4% across FAIR dimensions -- meaning that 61.6% of cross-database integration potential is unrealised. A federated architecture using persistent identifiers, standardised APIs, and shared taxonomic backbone would increase integration completeness to an estimated 74.7% at implementation cost of EUR 28.4 million over 5 years.