The National Biodiversity Network (NBN) in the UK is a collaborative partnership created to exchange biodiversity information. The NBN Trust, the charity which oversees and facilitates the development of the Network, has a membership including many UK wildlife conservation organisations, government, country agencies, environmental agencies, local environmental records centres and many voluntary groups.
The NBN Annual Conference 2019 took place over 13 and 14 November at the Albert Hall, Nottingham, UK with this year’s theme being “Network, Knowledge and Narrative – sharing and using data across the NBN and beyond”.
The event was well attended with 160 delegates from across the environmental sector including wildlife NGOs, academia, local environmental records centers, recording schemes, country agencies, students and individuals. Speakers included representatives from across the sector such as The NBN Trust, RSPB, Butterfly Conservation, British Ecological Society, The Linnean Society, Durham University, The Woodmeadow Trust to as well as independent nature conservationists.
Norfolk County Council was invited to host a stand at this conference, providing an opportunity for us to showcase the work of BID-REX and in particular the Action Plan. Several discussions were held to highlight our work.
NCC staff attended knowledge exchange sessions including ‘Providing multi-regional and national commercial services in collaboration with data providers’ and ‘Whose date are they anyway?’ both of which will inform local stakeholder discussions on Action 1 of our Action Plan, Norfolk Online Environmental Data Hub - Creation of an online system for delivering
data and interpretation tools.
The event also gave us the opportunity to reach further stakeholders and learn more about the data requirements of researchers and decision makers.
