THE MISSION OF THE PBI

The Mission of PBI is to:

Promote the integration and synthesis of ecological and biodiversity information through information technology in order to enhance the national and global capacity for observing, studying and understanding environmental complexity.

Specifically, the goals of PBI are to:

• Increase access to highly distributed and heterogeneous environmental, ecological and biodiversity data by developing and deploying appropriate informatics tools and technologies.
• Promote the understanding of the complex patterns and processes in the biosphere through the management, sharing, integration and analysis of this data and information.
  
• Enable an interdisciplinary research environment among the disciplines involved in understanding the patterns and processes of biocomplexity through the sharing of data and promoting productive interactions among these disciplines.
  
• Improve the opportunities for scientists, resource managers, policy makers and the public to make wise decisions about the environment by expanding access to information and knowledge on biodiversity and ecology.

Accomplishing these goals will involve:

• Improving access to and integration of ecological, biodiversity and related data and information.
  
• Developing tools and infrastructure to support the needs of scientists and other users of this data and information.
  
• Education and training of the next generation of biodiversity and ecological scientist incomputational and informatics skills.
  
• Collaboration of PBI with partners in associated disciplines.
  
• Serving as a voice for the communities interested in biodiversity and environmental informatics and in supporting a national cyberinfrastructure- an integrated, distributed system that interlaces computation, information, visualization and networking capabilities.