Distributed System of Scientific Collections

Providing hard evidence on our planet’s natural diversity

The DiSSCo environment

A world-class infrastructure

The Distributed System of Scientific Collections is a new world-class Research Infrastructure (RI) for natural science collections. The DiSSCo RI works for the digital unification of all European natural science assets under common curation and access policies and practices that aim to make the data easily Findable, more Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR). As such, DiSSCo enables the transformation of a fragmented landscape of the crucial natural science collections into an integrated knowledge base that provides interconnected hard evidence on the natural world.

DiSSCo represents the largest ever formal agreement between natural history museums, botanical gardens and collection-holding universities in the world.

The projects of DiSSCo

ENVRI-FAIR

Bringing together Environmental and Earth System Research Infrastructures to look for synergies is the ultimate goal of projects for the cluster of these RIs, the latest being ENVRI-FAIR. It started in January 2019 and will connect the cluster to the European Open Science Cloud.

DiSSCo Prepare

How to build a Research Infrastructure? To find out is the objective of the latest addition to the portfolio of DiSSCo-linked projects, DiSSCo Prepare. It will improved DiSSCo’s readiness to deliver its services, e.g. in terms of adapting to user needs, serving high-quality and trustworthy data, and implement the technical infrastructure.

ICEDIG

ICEDIG – Innovation and consolidation for large scale digitisation of natural heritage – is the first official step towards DiSSCo. It refines certain elements of the DiSSCo research infrastructure. It addresses the technical, financial, policy and governance aspects necessary to operate such a large distributed initiative for natural sciences collections across Europe.

SYNTHESYS+

The SYNTHESYS programme might be best known for the access it provides to natural science collections since 15 years. But it does so much more than that! Networking Actions and Joint Research Activities are equally part of SYNTHESYS. In its latest iteration SYNTHESYS+ it also provides virtual access to digital collections – a big step towards DiSSCo.

MOBILISE

To build and extend the network that supports DiSSCo is the task of the MOBILISE COST Action. The far reaching networking and training project will strengthen knowledge exchange and capacity building. The best part: It is open to join for all institutions in COST countries involved in research for biodiversity and geodiversity informatics.

What we do

The projects of DiSSCo

ENVRI-FAIR

Bringing together Environmental and Earth System Research Infrastructures to look for synergies is the ultimate goal of projects for the cluster of these RIs, the latest being ENVRI-FAIR. It started in January 2019 and will connect the cluster to the European Open Science Cloud.

MOBILISE

To build and extend the network that supports DiSSCo is the task of the MOBILISE COST Action. The far reaching networking and training project will strengthen knowledge exchange and capacity building. The best part: It is open to join for all institutions in COST countries involved in research for biodiversity and geodiversity informatics.

SYNTHESYS+

The SYNTHESYS programme might be best known for the access it provides to natural science collections since 15 years. But it does so much more than that! Networking Actions and Joint Research Activities are equally part of SYNTHESYS. In its latest iteration SYNTHESYS+ it also provides virtual access to digital collections – a big step towards DiSSCo.

ICEDIG

ICEDIG – Innovation and consolidation for large scale digitisation of natural heritage – is the first official step towards DiSSCo. It refines certain elements of the DiSSCo research infrastructure. It addresses the technical, financial, policy and governance aspects necessary to operate such a large distributed initiative for natural sciences collections across Europe.

DiSSCo Prepare

How to build a Research Infrastructure? To find out is the objective of the latest addition to the portfolio of DiSSCo-linked projects, DiSSCo Prepare. It will improved DiSSCo’s readiness to deliver its services, e.g. in terms of adapting to user needs, serving high-quality and trustworthy data, and implement the technical infrastructure.

Our objectives

What do we want to achieve?

DiSSCo sets the physical objects, the specimens, at the epicentre of the development of a robust, quality ensured and fit-for-purpose knowledge base for bio- and geo-diversity. The infrastructure works towards the digital unification of all European natural science assets under common curation, access policies, and best practices that aim to make the data easily Findable, more Accessible, linked and Interoperable and effectively Reusable (FAIR).

That’s what counts

DiSSCo by the Numbers

specimens

participating institutions

full-time scientists

countries

Stay up to date!

The latest news

COVID-19 TaF Public event on 17 July 2020

Jul 9, 2020

Coming from all over the world, the voluntary experts gathered under the CETAF-DISSCO Task Force will share the results of their collective activities that jointly aimed to identify how our community could better contribute to prevent pandemic outbreaks by sharing their respective scientific knowledge.

TDWG 2020 – A Virtual Conference

May 28, 2020

TDWG 2020 will be a virtual conference divided into working sessions (Sep 21-25) followed by a second week dedicated to dissemination and sharing (Oct 19-23).

18-22 May 2020: Biodiversity in the spotlight of this week world celebrations!

May 20, 2020

''Our solutions are in nature'' End of January, the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity announced the theme of the International Day for Biological Diversity on 22 May 2020: “Our Solutions are in Nature”. The theme for the day shows that Biodiversity...

The participating countries

⯈ Austria
⯈ Belgium
⯈ Bulgaria
⯈ Czech Republic
⯈ Denmark
⯈ Estonia
⯈ Finland

⯈ France
⯈ Germany
⯈ Greece
⯈ Hungary
⯈ Italy
⯈ Luxembourg
⯈ Netherlands

⯈ Norway
⯈ Poland
⯈ Portugal
⯈ Slovakia
⯈ Spain
⯈ Sweden
⯈ United Kingdom

Discover the complete network