EBONE is an EU FP7 project. The key challenge of the EBONE project is the development of a cost effective system of biodiversity data collection at regional, national and European levels. The need for the project is to develop a system for a coherent system for data collection that can be used for international comparable assessments. The OECD reports on the economies of countries and internatinal markets as well as on world developments. This can be done because financial and economic approaches and definitions in different parts of the world are comparable. This is not the case for biodiversity. All reporting and all assessments on biodiversity are hampered by the fact that the data used and the way they are collected and analysed is different forall countriesand NGOs. Conclusions can therefore not be generalised as is done for other fields such as economics and health. This project initiates common approaches and harmonisation of data from both field observations and earth observations. It willassess the existing approaches on their validity and their applicability starting with Europe, but expanding to other regions of the world.