ABSTRACT
The Grid offers the possibility for sharing resources effectively in a distributed environment. These resources include databases that were perhaps originally intended to be used only in isolation, but which hold data that may be of broader relevance, as well as analytical tools. This chapter discusses the potential benefits of a biodiversity Grid and explains why researchers might wish to contribute to and use such a system. The notion of a Grid is introduced by describing a number of existing Grids built for other application domains. The chapter then describes how a biodiversity Grid can be designed and how it could be used, identifying problems that are particularly important to address in the biodiversity application domain. A number of Grid-related biodiversity informatics projects are described, including the BiodiversityWorld project, in which the author is one of the investigators. Finally, the chapter assesses the current state of biodiversity Grid research, identifying areas in which significant work remains to be done so that a usable, robust biodiversity Grid can be made available.
