EurOBIS: the European node of the ocean biogeographic information system
Vanhoorne, B.; Claus, S.; Cuvelier, D.; Vanden Berghe, E.; Mees, J. (2004). EurOBIS: the European node of the ocean biogeographic information system, in: Ocean Biodiversity Informatics, Hamburg, Germany: 29 November to 1 December 2004: book of abstracts. pp. 105
In: (2004). Ocean Biodiversity Informatics, Hamburg, Germany: 29 November to 1 December 2004: book of abstracts. OBIS: Hamburg. 106 pp.
Within the MARBEF (MARine Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning) network, the European regional node of the Ocean Biogeographic Information System (EurOBIS) will be developed. This distributed system to present biogeographic information will integrate individual datasets on marine organisms into one large consolidated database, and can therefore provide a better understanding of long-term, large-scale patterns in European marine waters. The system makes use of the Distributed Generic Information Retrieval (DiGIR) protocol and is fully platform independent. It can be installed on any computer that has PHP and a web server running. The DiGIR records are available in a standardised XML format and are transferred via HTTP. A local copy of all remotely-held data is stored at the Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ) for performance reasons. Regular queries guarantee the data integrity of the system. An interactive layered Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) map is available for comparing and visualising the biogeographic data. The ultimate goal of EurOBIS is to provide the end-user with a fully searchable biogeographic database, focused on three main parameters of a distribution record: taxonomy, temporal and geographical cover. The European Register for Marine Species (ERMS) will function as the taxonomic backbone; each species list from every incoming dataset will be matched with this register. The inventory and integration of marine biological datasets is one of the main tasks of the data management team of the MARBEF project. This data archaeology, facilitated by the creation of the Network, tries to recover as much biogeographic information as possible. Data inventories and datasets of former European projects, such as BIOMARE will be recovered and will contribute to EurOBIS.
All data in the Integrated Marine Information System (IMIS) is subject to the VLIZ privacy policy
