Over the next 20 to 30 years, the information economy will gradually shift focus to a bio-economy. During this transition period, biodiversity information will act as a catalyst for the evolving bio-economy. This information will be used to develop early warning systems and urban planning tools, conduct research into species distribution patterns, undertake the DNA mapping of all earth’s species, etc. A knowledge base of all the world’s biodiversity information, if available today, would be invaluable.

The emerging bio-economy will evolve into two main areas: human health research based on genomics and biomedicine, and planetary health research based on ecology and conservation. Biodiversity information will underpin both these areas.

Research in the area of human health will use raw data such as the human genome project results. As these fields of research evolve, the need for additional data sources will grow. Research into planetary health will require the digitization of existing hardcopy archives and development of tools for capturing and maintaining new data.