In advancing “from prototype to full operation”, the GBIF community recognises the need to move to a more distributed and decentralised model based on the active engagement of more self-sufficient participants nodes.

Such logical evolution of the GBIF network architecture is aimed first at increasing its capacity to rapidly mobilize and share larger amounts of biodiversity-related information, covering not only the existing primary biodiversity data records but also associated information such as metadata, observational, multimedia, names, and other data types. A particular focus will be on further simplifying the process of contributing data by new providers, and on more frequent indexing updates from existing providers.

To achieve this, the GBIF Secretariat has developed a preliminary blueprint of its decentralization strategy, which is aimed at presenting the main components required for such an ambitious evolution of its network architecture. It presents how participant nodes will be progressively empowered to fully participate with the appropriate standards, tools, and training. For example, the new Integrated Provider Toolkit is being developed to enable users to more easily provide occurrence data, taxonomic information, and metadata to GBIF’s distributed indexing nodes.

In summary, the ambitions are to significantly expand the scope of content mobilisation and discovery and to couple this with a decentralised model based on customisable tools to better meet the needs of participants. The poster will provide a simple-to-understand, graphically illustrated blueprint of this decentralization strategy.