Wildlife Disease Data Standard

Our goal with the wildlife disease data standard is to describe interactions between hosts and parasites with sufficient detail and structure as to be useful, but not burdensome on the end user. In this case a parasite can be anything from a micro-parasite like a virus to a macro-parasite like a tick. We use this broad term because systems are complicated and a researcher may want to monitor interactions at multiple levels. The standard has two components disease data and project metadata. The disease data component describes the contents and structure of data related to the detection (or not) of a parasite in/on a given host and is focused on data exchange. The project metadata component describes the contents and structure of data related to the creation of the disease data component and is focused on data discovery. The disease data component allows us to create a collection of datasets that can be re-used, aggregated, and shared, while the project metadata component provides context for the data, makes it easier to find the dataset, and gives clear information about attribution and use