Benefits of OGC Compliant Standards and Tools for Biogeography Related Information Sharing
Patricia Mergen, Bart Meganck, Danny Meirte, Franck Theeten, An Tombeur, Michel Louette
Abstract
End-user and stakeholders surveys have identified easy access to geographic information and distribution maps in re-usable formats as a major need in biodiversity conservation. According to GBIF, around 75% of the current (July 2006) 97 million records connected to the system are provided with geographic coordinates. In order to use these data efficiently, users need additional information and tools to assess the "fitness for use" of the available information in form of primary data. The Royal Museum of Central Africa has as goal to provide tools and services for integration, visualization and quality checking of biodiversity data. Care is taken to keep these developments compliant with both TDWG and OGC standards.
RMCA is involved in the GBIF Seed Money awarded project HerpNET (http://www.herpnet.org), in which around 200,000 georeferenced and checked amphibian records from Sub-Saharan Africa will be made available through GBIF..
This poster will also illustrate how the OGC compliant Deegree Java Framework (suitable for a complete Spatial Data Infrastructure - http://www.deegree.org), has been used to display the itineraries followed during scientific sampling expeditions (SYNTHESYS Network Activity D project, http://www.biocase.org/products/geo_services/itineraries).
It is envisaged that the developed services will be made available to the Cybertaxonomy Platform (EU project EDIT, http://www.e-taxonomy.eu) as additional tools for taxonomists wishing to use species and specimen distribution maps and related geographic information for online taxonomic revisions.
RMCA is involved in the GBIF Seed Money awarded project HerpNET (http://www.herpnet.org), in which around 200,000 georeferenced and checked amphibian records from Sub-Saharan Africa will be made available through GBIF..
This poster will also illustrate how the OGC compliant Deegree Java Framework (suitable for a complete Spatial Data Infrastructure - http://www.deegree.org), has been used to display the itineraries followed during scientific sampling expeditions (SYNTHESYS Network Activity D project, http://www.biocase.org/products/geo_services/itineraries).
It is envisaged that the developed services will be made available to the Cybertaxonomy Platform (EU project EDIT, http://www.e-taxonomy.eu) as additional tools for taxonomists wishing to use species and specimen distribution maps and related geographic information for online taxonomic revisions.