Nature Information System of the Basque Country

About this good practice

By project BID-REX

Published on 29 November 2018

Spain

País Vasco

It is a tool for the integration of available scientific and technical knowledge necessary for the proper development of public competencies in the planning, management, monitoring and evaluation processes.
The information is organized in interconnected elements: Species, Habitats, Sites, References, Ocurrences, Indicators, Institutions and people of the network of knowledge.
The main principles on which the System is based are: open access and reuse culture, for making data sharing the norm; data standards, for ensuring data can be understood and used across systems and across disciplines (DwCA, Plinian Core); persistent storage in Basque Government servers; easy-to-use for anyone and recognition and acknowledgment of contributions.

Expert opinion

This is a user-friendly tool for integration, consultation and analysis of information through collaborative process. Nature and biodiversity-related data is increasingly available online and for download and use by anyone, as “open data”. Adopting an open data policy is a way to improve transparency and ensure more robust analyses. The Nature Information System developed in the Basque Country (Spain) can provide helpful insight to other regions in this regard. The tool demonstrated positive results and has significant learning potential.

Venelina Varbova

Resources needed

Around 1 M€ was needed during first years (2006-2010) to build up the infrastructure and 80.000 €/year (2011-2016) to consolidate it. Since 2016 we are investing 200.000-400.000 €/year to update information through public contracts, subsidies and investment programs and agreements.

Evidence of success

More than 950.000 occurences, 3.600 references, 8.000 multimedia, 9800 taxon, 1000 collaborators recorded, 50.000 visits to the website this year.

Potential for learning or transfer

The data model we use to integrate information from multiple sources and that relates the different objects to legal protection frameworks and conservation objectives can be exported to other regions, since we use international data and metadata standards.