GBIF

Global Biodiversity Information Facility

The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) enables free and open access to biodiversity data online. It is an international, government-initiated and government-funded organisation that focuses on making biodiversity data available to all for the purposes of scientific research, conservation and sustainable development.

GBIF promotes and facilitates the mobilisation, access, discovery and use of occurence data of organisms. GBIF provides:

  • An information infrastructure (an Internet-based network of databases that contains biodiversity data)
  • Community-developed tools, standards and protocols (tools that data providers need to format and share their data)
  • Capacity-building, events and documents

Data is shared according to the GBIF Data Use Agreement, which includes the provision that users of any data accessed through or retrieved via the GBIF Portal will always acknowledge the original data publishers.

All may freely access the GBIF data portal, which currently contains a large body of data records. 

GBIF data portal screenshot 

So far, 58 countries and 46 organisations joined GBIF and more than 350 millions of occurrences data have been made available online.

 

The Belgian Biodiversity Platform is the Belgian national node of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). 
François Guissart is the Head of the Belgian Delegation.
André Heughebaert is the contact point for any GBIF-related queries and technical support.
Nicolas Noé and Julien Cigar, IT experts of the Belgian Biodiversity Platform also take part in GBIF meetings and activities.