Plenary given at the 2022 Conference of the Society for Open, Reliable, and Transparent Ecology and Evolutionary Biology https://www.sortee.org/upcoming/
**Twelve years of open science infrastructure: Lessons from the Atlas of Living Australia**
**13 July 0300-0430 UTC**
**Abstract:** The Atlas of Living Australia (ALA) has been serving open biodiversity data since 2010, and now contains over 100 million observations of plants, animals and fungi. Preserving and enhancing the usefulness of this data requires tradeoffs between technologies with contrasting strengths and weaknesses; manual vs automated solutions to common problems; and the challenges of providing novel innovations simultaneously with consistent and reliable services. In this talk, I will discuss some recent case studies of how the ALA has managed these tradeoffs to better support the global biodiversity informatics community, and highlight what lessons they hold for emerging projects.
**Bio:** Martin Westgate is head of science and decision support for the Atlas of Living Australia, Australia’s largest database of biodiversity observations. He holds a doctorate in landscape ecology and conservation biology from the Australian National University.