Open Biodiversity and Health Big Data (BHBD)

For the triennium 2023-2026, we will make more efforts to expand international network, conduct scientific cooperation and communication, as well as provide better services for open data sharing. The action plans mainly include the following aspects.

1) Expansion of international network

We will continue to increase more members of BHBD, particularly among IUBS member countries.

2) International data exchange and mirroring

We have been cooperating with the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration (INSDC, including NCBI in US, EBI in UK, and DDBJ in Japan), and will try to establish partnership with INSDC in the near future. An international project has been funded by CAS in collaboration with NCBI for the development of international omics data sharing systems (RMB 800,000, 2023-2025).

3) Development of database system

The Genome Sequence Archive (GSA) has been designated as a supported data repository by Springer Nature and Elsevier, and also recognized by Wiley and Taylor & Francis. We will continuously update and develop our open data system through big data archive, curation, integration and analysis, and provide free, fast and convenient multi-omics data submission and archive services for users from all over the world.

4) Building an open data consortium for health big data sharing and a cloud service platform for big data analyzing

To promote health big data sharing across studies domestically and internationally,  we will establish an open data consortium. It aims to establish the mechanisms and best practices for health big data sharing and collaborating, especially for large-scale human genetic and genomics data. This consortium will seed the high coverage (~30x) whole genome sequencing data and a full spectrum phenotype data of about 1000 samples from the Chinese Academy of Sciences Precision Medicine Initiative (CASPMI) cohort. The data will be fully open to consortium members. In the future, more data are expected to be deposited by participating members and will be shared to researchers following the open and FAIR principle. To follow the health big data governing and regulations in different countries, we will build an integrated online big data sharing and analyzing platform. This platform will leverage modern cloud service infrastructure to provide data safety protection and make the data available worldwide. This platform will also leverage the flexibility of cloud service to integrate best practice pipelines for analyzing health big data and support user-customized analyses by providing a central platform for data safety, sharing and collaborating.

5) Application and implementation of international research programmes

Together with our BHBD members, we have successfully obtained two joint research grants from ANSO: one on emerging infectious diseases with partners from Brazil, France, and Pakistan (RMB 1.3 million, 2023-2025), and another on tuberculosis infection in monkeys with partners in Thailand and the US (US$ 150,000, 2023-2025). We will work in hand with our partners to implement these programmes with academic publications. Meanwhile, we will try to apply for new international progarmmes and encourage more collaborations among our members and partners.

6) Organization and participation of international meetings

We will host the Big Data Forum for Life and Health Sciences annually in China. The BHBD Meetings/Workshops will also be held in our member countries. We will also participate various international meetings to promote our resources and seek new cooperation chances.

7) Education and training of international talents

We will update the education website (https://ngdc.cncb.ac.cn/education/) to provide more educational materials. Furthermore, international education and training courses will be organized for our members and partners in need. International visiting scholars will also be welcomed upon request.