Enhancing biodiversity monitoring and people’s connection with nature: The Natural History Museum's Data Ecosystem (Guest blog by Thoughtworks)

As part of the project, Thoughtworks was selected by the Natural History Museum to develop the new biodiversity and environmental monitoring Data Ecosystem that will capture, share and interpret urban nature data for different audiences. This platform will help transform the Museum’s scientific research and community science capabilities by bringing together a broad range of UK biodiversity and environmental data types in one place for the first time, encouraging more integrated cross-disciplinary research programmes.

The Museum will make the Data Ecosystem available to its researchers at the Museum, as well as researchers at the Museum’s partner institutes across the UK. Scientists will be able to study biodiversity data types alongside environmental data such as soil and atmospheric chemistry or noise pollution, rapidly and accurately. This, combined with access to the Museum’s 28 years of historical wildlife data from their South Kensington gardens, will build an increasingly detailed picture of biodiversity functioning and health and is expected to open up large-scale opportunities for research and nature positive action. The intention, over time, is to create a central hub for UK biodiversity data.

As Richard Hinton, CIO, Natural History Museum said: "The home to more than 80 million specimens - and with more than five million visitors annually - the Natural History Museum is also a center of research specialising in taxonomy, identification and conservation. The ‘Urban Nature Project’ gives us the opportunity, through data, to advance research, to support education and help people to reassess humanity's impact on UK biodiversity.”

Visual and environmental DNA-based observations of plants and wildlife, as well as environmental and acoustic monitoring data from a high spatial resolution sensor network in the Museum’s gardens will be curated and combined within the Data Ecosystem. The richness of data will enable the Museum’s scientists to build scientific evidence of the impacts that habitat creation, restoration, and translocation have on the UK’s urban wildlife, from grassland to pond habitats.

The Data Ecosystem is also designed to enable the Museum’s globally-recognised Community Science Programme, by providing a platform through which individuals, community groups and schools can join and contribute to world-class research relating to their local wildlife and environment by inputting data.