A week long workshop was held in Campinas, Brazil during the first week of April 2007. The focus of the workshop was to develop a test-bed web application to demonstrate the interoperability of digital data and services using open standards, with particular emphasis on geospatial, taxonomic and occurrence biodiversity data.

Two versions of a prototype web application were developed using PHP and Flex. The wizard style application leads the user through a defined sequence of steps in order to acquire sufficient data to create a niche model. The process includes taxonomic validation using the Catalogue of Life, search and retrieval of occurrence data using services such as the GBIF portal or WFS, selection of raster layers representing environmental data and modeling these data using the openModeller Web Service to create a probability surface that represents areas where a species is likely to occur.

The workshop highlighted how easy it is to rapidly create a feature rich application using open access to data, free software and open standards. The workshop also highlighted areas where further work is needed to effectively blend these services into a cohesive computing platform. Finally, suggestions were made for improving OGC and TDWG standards in a report that is available at (http://wiki.tdwg.org/twiki/bin/view/Geospatial/InteroperabilityWorkshop1). The prototype will be demonstrated and the issues arising will be discussed.