Introduction

Welcome to the blog of the LifeWatch INBO team! After a couple of months of preparatory work, we are ready to start sharing ideas and experiences in order to turn the LifeWatch efforts at the INBO into open and collaborative projects.

We are building an open terrestrial and freshwater observatory, which takes form through several projects, most of which are the result of an internal project call we launched at our institute last year. These include a GPS tracking network for large birds (which you can already follow live), an acoustic telemetry network for eels, monitoring of Natura 2000 habitats with an unmanned aerial system (UAS), and remote groundwater monitoring over the cellphone network.

The data generated by this observatory will be made available online as open data. More specifically we will be developing web services, so other applications can make use of our data, helping researchers answer questions. We are also making an effort to unlock the data in the existing data systems of the INBO. A number of these datasets are already available through our GBIF Integrated Publishing Toolkit and are registered and discoverable through the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF).

We are still figuring things out, but this time we are ready to openly document it. We are convinced it we will be of use to us and we hope it will be of use to you as well. We are looking forward to your comments, ideas and suggestions!

You can subscribe to our RSS feed, follow us on Twitter, leave a comment below, or read more about our projects on the lifewatch.be portal which is managed by our partner institute, the Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ).