In 2003, the National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) was approached by the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs and asked to coordinate a workshop or gathering of experts to explore the implementation of a Global Invasive Species Information Network (GISIN).
The Experts Meeting on Implementation of a GISIN was convened from April 6th to the 8th in 2004, in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. Four goals for the meeting included:-
creation of an online community to support global collaboration,
identification and agreement on common data types for global database cross-searching and interoperability,
creation of a proposal funding toolkit containing such things as example proposals, proposal-writing guidance, suggested funding sources and other related information, as a capacity-building task, and
a review and listing of existing online IAS databases
The Experts Meeting on Implementation of a Global Invasive Species Information Network was successfully adjourned 8 April 2004. Substantial progress was made by the 76 participants in agreeing on the types and formats of information to be collected by participating online invasive species databases. Twenty-six countries were represented by participants at the meeting. Many alliances and tentative agreements were made among members of these nations and organizations. Participants forged new collaboration efforts and plans to exchange invasive species information, share database structures, and link existing databases. The charter of the GISIN, known as The Baltimore Declaration was released in June 2004.
An interim steering committee was chosen and will develop a work plan and define the next steps. In addition to being posted on this Web site and the GISIN Invasive Species online community at http://my.nbii.gov/, the transcripts of presentations (with permission), details of the agreements, and questions raised were used to create the workshop's proceedings, published in August 2004.
NOTE: If you would like to become a member of the GISIN Invasive Species online community and participate in this initiative, please contact Annie Simpson (asimpson@usgs.gov) or Elizabeth Sellers (esellers@usgs.gov).
Each document (in the table below) is available for download in one of several formats including text (txt), Microsoft Excel 2000 (xls), Portable Document Format (PDF), Hypertext Markup (htm) and Microsoft Word 2000 (doc). If you need assistance with downloading these documents, please contact us.
| Document Name | Document Download
Formats & Sizes in Kilobytes |
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| Agenda & Abstracts for Oral Presentations & Electronic Posters |
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| Draft GISIN Framework |
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| Pre-meeting e-discussion Summary |
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| General Meeting Information |
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| Hotel Information |
Other publications produced for or in relation to the GISIN can be found on our Publications and Products page.
Original logistics page, formerly designed and hosted by Information International Associates, Inc. (IIa).
This meeting was made possible through funding from the Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs (OES) of the U.S. Department of State, with coordination by the U.S. National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) and collaboration from members of the Global Invasive Species Programme (GISP) Informatics Working Group and others from around the globe, and logistical and organizational support from Information International Associates, Inc. (IIa).
