The Portuguese Node of GBIF is pleased to announce the start of operation of the Biodiversity Data Portal of Portugal, available from today at the address dados.gbif.pt. This portal provides access to information on biodiversity of ten national institutions that publish occurrence data through GBIF, and data published by foreign institutions to Portugal. In total, more than 1.6 million occurrence data available for consultation.
Data now available on this site are initially published through the international GBIF portal, GBIF.org. The national platform now offers more viewing options and information analyzing tools, as well as a friendlier interface to the user. Since it is implemented nationally, the portal offers features that would not be viable in a global portal such as detailed availability of data for each record, visible either lists format or maps, space searches with the creation of species reports for selected areas, the search of records by location, search by lists of species, among others functionalities. It is also possible to query information about the portuguese GBIF publishing institutions , as well as the metadata of the collections or biodiversity records databases. With this portal, it is now easier for users to identify the relevant information for the purposes of their research or analysis, without having to download the data and analyze them locally.
The technology used in this portal is based on the computer platform Atlas of Living Australia, which was developed by the Australian node of GBIF. The system was already adapted to national portals from other countries such as Spain, France, Brazil, Scotland and the United Kingdom. The software adaptation effort for the various national contexts has been carried out by a community of programmers of the countries involved, associated to the national GBIF nodes, with the support of the International GBIF Secretariat and, of course, the Atlas of Living Australia.
The platform, developed in open source software was implemented using the cloud computing service of the National Distributed Computing Infrastructure - INCD within the framework of cooperation between this national research infrastructure and PORBIOTA - Portuguese E-Infrastructure for Information and Research on Biodiversity, to which the Portuguese Node of GBIF is an integrated member. The INCD and PORBIOTA are part of the National Roadmap of Research Infrastructures, promoted by the Foundation for Science and Technology.
GBIF is an intergovernmental organization which aims to facilitate the free sharing and access to biodiversity data. At the national level, it is the GBIF Portuguese node, hosted at the School of Agriculture, that promotes the national participation, whether by sharing information on biodiversity, either through the use for scientific studies, natural resource management or decision making. There are currently 14 Portuguese institutions registered in GBIF as data publisher, ten of those currently share about more than 430,000 records across 16 data sets, of which 325 000 for the country, and the other for a total of 93 countries or territories.