Phenomics Australia, the Atlas of Living Australia, Queensland Museum, CSIRO, and NCRIS hosted dozens of experts from across the world at an ICRI 2024 side event on Friday 6 December from 10:00 am – 3:00 pm at the Queensland Museum to discuss how we can design a nationally distributed collections infrastructure.
This event explored the opportunities and pathways for establishing nationally distributed collections infrastructure in Australia, showcasing current opportunities and challenges, and, through facilitated panel discussions, explored the enablers to realise a future state. Discussions were informed by international exemplars, such as the EU Distributed System of Scientific Collections Program, which recognises the fundamental role Australian collections play in a global system.
The event explored the following five areas that are seen as critical for supporting the future state:
- Collection digitisation, storage and management
- Digital infrastructure, data access and integration
- Emerging transformational technology
- Skills and workforce development
- Sectoral leadership
Research collections’ fundamental role in supporting science, decision-making, and industry applications has received renewed interest, given technological advances that can rapidly generate new data and insights from physical specimens. The National Research Infrastructure (NRI) Roadmap calls for a step change around a national approach to collections and novel techniques in genomics, advanced imaging, and, increasingly AI/ML means that more information than ever can be derived from Australia’s collections.
Further, the volume and breadth of collections are increasing, and small niche collections, for example, those in the higher education sector, may play an increasingly important scientific role. The importance of Indigenous data sovereignty and the opportunity to improve how a future state incorporates non-Western knowledge systems will also be fundamental. The distributed nature of Australia’s biological collections demands new approaches to realising a vision around nationally distributed collections, including those in the human health domains, including biobanks, biological, and environmental.
Collections remain heterogeneous in their technical capabilities, access to skills and a trained workforce, and readiness to leverage technological advances to deliver better national and international outcomes.
Image credit to: Joseph Byford Photography
