Data is increasingly valuable, but most of the opportunities that arise from gathering and analysing it depend on two key elements: accessibility and trustworthiness. These conditions apply to all fields, including those depending on or directly related to pollinator management and health, including beekeeping, land management, and environmental monitoring. The EU Pollinator Hub has been at the forefront of creating a one-stop solution for data management: a comprehensive public data repository able to store, process, and democratise pollinator-related data.
In December 2024, the EU Pollinator Hub reached a new development stage, concluding a grant agreement with the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). The platform is now live and available to data scientists, land managers, institutional actors, beekeepers, and citizens.
The EU Pollinator Hub is now taking a life of its own while its users continue to shape it. Users are now able to use all of the functionalities of the platform, including:
- Uploading datasets: users can upload their data to the Hub, which serves as a curated repository to store and make data accessible to other users (visibility parameters are entirely under the control of the data owner). The platform also has additional tools for data visualisation and reporting.
- Navigate the data catalogue: users can explore available datasets, including data made public by other users and datasets acquired and made available by the EU Pollinator Hub team.
Tutorial videos for EU Pollinator Hub’s functionalities
The EU Pollinator Hub is responding to a significant challenge for researchers and stakeholders. Currently, they must navigate through vast amounts of data with varying levels of reliability, accessibility, and usability. The Hub not only serves as a streamlined repository that contributes to democratising access to data, it also creates a robust framework that ensures:
- Uncompromising Data Quality: Every dataset undergoes rigorous quality checks, eliminating inconsistencies, errors, and unreliable information that can derail research efforts.
- FAIR Principles at the Core: Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reusability are the foundation principles of the Hub.
- Seamless Standardisation: Advanced standardisation framework transforms disparate data into a unified, coherent format, breaking down barriers between disciplines, research domains, and institutions.
The groundbreaking tool that is the EU Pollinator Hub is shaping up to become the communal ground for researchers and stakeholders of pollinator health. The Hub generates insights, drives innovations, and provides the tools to help map pollinator health and, thus, environmental health.
The development of the EU Pollinator Hub is coordinated by BeeLife European Beekeeping Coordination, a non-profit organisation specialising in protecting pollinators in Europe. The mission of the Hub is to provide the appropriate digital framework for researchers, institutions, and stakeholders working with pollinator-related data to become drivers of positive change through trustworthy data.
We invite researchers, institutions, and funding bodies to embrace this new approach to data management. By adopting our repository, you’re not just storing data – you’re:
- Elevating the integrity of scientific research
- Promoting transparency and open science
- Accelerating the pace of discovery
- Contributing to a global, interconnected research ecosystem
The EU Pollinator Hub acknowledges and works to ensure researchers and the public good get the most out of the critical asset of pollinator-related data. The most recent developments of the Hub provide the highest standards of care, precision, and data accessibility.
Join us in this pollinator data revolution! Become a data provider, navigate the Hub, and get the most out of available data. You can also become a partner or sponsor to help further the development and growth of this groundbreaking tool.
