BMD partner participates at the Bern Biodiversity Data Day 2026
On 26 May, BMD partner Robert Waterhouse (SIB) participated in the Bern Biodiversity Data Day 2026, where he presented an overview of the BMD project.
The Bern Biodiversity Data Day, organised by the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (SIB) and the Swiss Academy of Sciences (SCNAT), was home to many Swiss biodiversity experts, such as data managers or policy writers. The event aimed to strengthen collaboration, exchange, and coordination across the fields of biodiversity and science.
“Each type of data reveals a different facet of biodiversity: species presence, habitats, adaptive capacity. The challenge today is to connect them to build the most complete picture possible and better inform decisions,” says Robert Waterhouse, Director of the Environmental Bioinformatics Group at SIB, for SCNAT and SIB.
Daniele Silvestro, who is part of the CAPTAIN development team, also participated in the event. The CAPTAIN AI software, developed by SIB and used in other EU-funded projects like BGE and BiCIKL, consists of models for conservation prioritisation that are trained with Reinforcement Learning to use the available data and resources, such as species distribution data, land use, and climate change, and train conservation policies. CAPTAIN is also valuable to BMD, since one of the biodiversity analysis tools under integrative development in BMD is the CAPTAIN model. It will be used for making scientific data FAIR and accessible, therefore aligning with BMD’s open science objectives.
