Virtual Access to
Vlaams Instituut Voor De Zee (VLIZ)
Country
Belgium
Liaison officer
Katrina Exter
Expertise
Contact
Data, Environment, Fisheries
Services offered
The Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ) is the central platform for marine research in Flanders. The institute's mission is to strengthen the knowledge and excellence of marine research in Flanders and beyond. The VLIZ Marine Data Centre (VMDC) is involved in the development and management of state-of-the-art international e-infrastructures and services: the central portal and the biology portal for the European Marine Observation and Data Network (EMODnet), LifeWatch Taxonomic Backbone and data systems, World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS), Ocean Biogeographic Information System (EurOBIS), Marine Data Archive, Integrated Marine Information System, Marine Regions.
World Register of Marine Species
The World Register of Marine Species (WoRMS) is a taxonomic database that aims to provide an authoritative and comprehensive list of names of marine organisms. The content of WoRMS is controlled by taxonomic and thematic experts and has an editorial management system where each taxonomic group is represented by an expert who has authority over the content and is responsible for controlling the quality of the information. WoRMS provides web-based and API-based services for browsing and querying the taxonomic information it holds, together with other information such as traits, biogeographic data, links to other taxonomic systems, etc.
Marine Regions
Marine Regions is a standard list of marine georeferenced place names and areas. It integrates and serves geographic information and proposes a standard of marine georeferenced locations, boundaries and regions. This improves access and clarity of the different geographic, and marine names such as seas, sandbanks, ridges and bays and displays univocally the boundaries of marine biogeographic or managerial marine areas. Marine Regions provides web-based and API-based searches on its information, as well as an LDES feed.
EurOBIS
The European Ocean Biodiversity Information System – EurOBIS – is an online marine biogeographic database compiling data on all living marine creatures. The principle aims of EurOBIS are to centralize the largely scattered
biogeographic data on marine species collected by European institutions and to make these data freely available and easily accessible. All data go through a number of quality control procedures before they are made available online, assuring a minimum level of quality necessary to put the data to good use. The EurOBIS data infrastructure is used as the central hub for making biological data available within the biological lot of EMODnet. EurOBIS provides web-based services for queries. API-based queries, data visualisation, and subsetting-downloading are provided via EMODnet, as well as tutorials for using these in R.
Click here to know more about EurOBIS
Click here to know more about EMODnet
LifeWatch Belgium Data services
The Belgian LifeWatch project is part of the European LifeWatch infrastructure and can be seen as a virtual laboratory for biodiversity research. There are numerous data services and data portals available from LifeWatch Belgium.
IMIS
The Integrated Marine Information System is an online information system that provides information on marine datasets, publications, persons and institutions. It serves as a metadata catalogue for many projects and initiatives.
MDA
The Marine Data Archive (MDA) is an online repository specifically developed to independently archive data files in a fully documented manner. The MDA serves individual scientists, consortia, working groups and institutes: i) to manage data files and file versions for a specific context (project, report, analysis, monitoring campaign); ii) as a personal or institutional archive or backup system; iii) as an open repository for data publication.