ARISE: A Dutch dataspace connecting nature and people

Biodiversity is declining worldwide at an unprecedented rate. The densely populated country of the Netherlands is even one of the forerunners exhibiting this dramatic decline. In recent years, however, concern about the environment has moved decisively from niche to mainstream. In this chapter we introduce ARISE (Authoritative and Rapid Identification System for Essential biodiversity information), a government-funded research infrastructure that connects nature and people. The ambition of ARISE is to enable recognition of all natural species in order to monitor on a large scale end-to-end and near real-time biodiversity, thereby helping to 'bend the curve' of biodiversity decline. To do so, ARISE (i) provides an open data platform to collect field-captured samples and digital observations of all living organisms for species level recognition, and (ii) offers tools and services to challenge and engage researchers, policymakers and citizens to create the data to enable insights that help us to better understand biodiversity in relation to our environment and human activities. ARISE is linked to the Dutch national SURF infrastructure for data management and HPC capacity. Tools comprise: (i) an AI repository for species recognition models; (ii) smart annotation services for images and sound; (iii) dashboards, leaderboards and maps; and (iv) an array of sensors to capture multicellular species in their natural environment. As such, ARISE will be the 'one-stop-shop' or marketplace for species recognition services and non-invasive biodiversity monitoring.