yhedn project overview

creating Y orkshire & H umber E nvironmental D ata N etwork

In 2006 Natural England published a document entitled "A Roadmap to the Establishment of a Yorkshire & Humber Ecological Data Network". This document was the result of an in-depth consultancy process to discover the current status of the existing recording bodies in the region along with their strengths, problems and aspirations. There are several well established record centres across the region. Record centres are funded and staffed to different degrees, housed by different organisations, cover very disparate areas and provide different tailored local services.

Increased environmental awareness has prompted a requirement for more in-depth knowledge of the impact we have on our environment. In order to better understand our society's impact on nature, we need to be able to collate data from disparate sources and compare it in a rational way. We also need to review the way that data is sourced and surveyed.

Currently data is typically collected in one of two ways:

• Amateur naturalist field trips - Amateur Naturalists represent the majority of taxonomic experts in the country and collect data in the course of their daily lives about their chosen taxonomic groups.
• Professional surveys - Developers commission professional surveys where necessary to support planning applications. Statutory Agencies and Local Authorities also commission professional surveys for protected sites such as SSSIs and SPAs.

Both are an undeniably vital source of data but data captured in this way is problematic in that the survey effort varies according to where the naturalists choose to go or where developers choose to build. In order to fully understand our impact on nature we need to use more strategic methods for gathering data and this will require significant investment.

The roadmap document addresses the first stage of this process - collating the existing sources of data and enabling data sharing and services across the Yorkshire & Humber region. Through establishing this regional centre and rational network of recording bodies it is hoped that in time we will be able to coordinate funding across the region and apply for regional funding to support more strategic surveying for key species and habitats. It will also streamline the production of regional datasets and allow for simple interaction with National level projects like the NBNGateway and BARS.

The document recommends three stages in moving towards a rational recording community:

• "Harmonisation" - Identifying sustainable funding to secure all record centres with sufficient staffing and offering a common set of core services (as well as any locally specific services), using common policies and processes including a standard agreement for data sharing.
• "Integration" - Developing IT services to enable the sharing of digitised species, site and habitat data.
• "Optimisation" - Establishing a regional contract for things like servers, IT support and administration to provide a simple and cost effective framework and cut the cost of running the network.

The yhedn project has been set up to progress the route set out in the roadmap document. Humber Environmental Data Centre was chosen to run this project as they had already gone a great deal of the way towards developing the technology needed for the 2nd - "Integration" phase.