Coordinators: Kerry Howell & Heidi Mayer
Vision statement: By 2030 we will have established internationally accepted standards and quality control measures, including the development of methods, tools and training materials for the documentation, annotation and archiving of in-situ marine visual data and metadata; all data will be open and FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable), supporting use in automation of observations, and global-scale assessments of biodiversity to inform sustainable development and management of marine resources. These standards and quality control measures will be adopted and employed by others forming best practice.
Activities: The group meets quarterly and is focused on training, support and quality control of imagery data.. They have:
- Published “an Ecologists Guide to BIIGLE” aimed at supporting those new to the field to annotate their data in BIIGLE.
- Given on-line training courses in image annotation in BIIGLE
- Undertaken a quality control exercise for deep-sea sponges
The group’s new focus is on collecting metadata to understand the extent of annotated data available in the community, with a view to potentially attempt to pool some data at a basin scale.