What does this mean for me?
The following article answers some of the questions currently being asked about the NBN Atlas Scotland.
What is the NBN Atlas Scotland?
The NBN Atlas Scotland is a pilot for the UK-wide implementation of the Atlas of Living Australia’s open source biodiversity data infrastructure.
This work is intended to deliver on the fourth Strategic aim of the new NBN Strategy to: Provide the best biological information management infrastructure and ensure stability, security and usability for an increasingly mature data management infrastructure.
This pilot is part of a work programme to build Atlas infrastructure for England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland and use the same scalable platform to create an NBN Atlas for the whole of the UK. Each of these five atlases would have the same functionality and same basic design and be supported by a single database.
The governance group for the NBN Atlas Scotland includes Scottish Environmental Protection Agency, Scottish Natural Heritage, Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, Scottish Biodiversity Information Forum, Natural England, Natural Resources Wales, Northern Ireland Environment Agency and the National Biodiversity Network Trust.
Why are we building new infrastructure?
In 2015 the NBN Secretariat published a Technical and User Review of the NBN Gateway that came out of consultation and workshops with several hundred people. The general conclusion was that although NBN Data Partners have been hugely successful in sharing biological data (more 112 million records), the infrastructure is not now fit for future purpose. Significant investment would be needed to meet the growing needs of both Data Partners and users or an alternative strategy should be adopted.
The Atlas of Living Australia (AoLA) completed by CSIRO in 2010, provides a suite of on-line tools for capturing, accessing and analysing biological and related environmental data. Designed to fulfil a broad spectrum of user-needs in flexible ways, the open source framework has enabled it to be replicated in other countries.
The Atlas infrastructure was chosen as the best option for the UK because of the scalability of the platform, the diversity of data types that it can accommodate, the global use of the atlas platform and the data visualisation and analysis tools. It will deliver all the functionality being requested by NBN members during last year’s review as well as matching the functionality provided by the NBN Gateway.
Who has Scottish data?
There are currently 87 NBN Data Partners that have shared data for Scotland via the NBN Gateway. In addition there are many more organisations and people with data that could be shared via the atlas platform. The NBN Secretariat is now working with all these NBN Data Partners to establish new license agreements for these data so that they can be transferred to the NBN Atlas Scotland.
What can I use the NBN Atlas Scotland for?
? Searching Scotland’s largest freely available biodiversity image library
? Searching the Atlas for data about more than 25,000 marine or terrestrial species
? Searching for biological data by predefined areas, by postcode or by polygon search tools
? Searching the atlas for habitat data related to the Scottish EUNIS habitat map
? Finding organisations working in a particular area (geographic or taxonomic)
? Online analysis of datasets including bioclimatic modelling, scatter plot analysis, area reporting
? Creating alerts for species records
? Viewing species, habitat and spatial environmental data in an integrated fashion
? Recording your own biological records
Are web services going to change?
Yes, web services will change from the current NBN Gateway REST services.
The API for the Atlas of Living Australia can be found here. The web services for the NBN Atlas Scotland will be modeled off these APIs, with different URLs.
Please also note that the services for the NBN Atlas Scotland will be a subset of these services given the NBN Atlas Scotland does not use all the components of the Atlas of Living Australia.
Once the development for the NBN Atlas Scotland is finished, a complete list of the web services will be made available.
The NBN Secretariat recognises that for some NBN Data Partners this will involve considerable effort to rewrite their specific web services. The Network will support NBN Data Partners with this change to ensure they can make full use of the available web services.
How are sensitive species managed on the Atlas platform?
All sensitive species data held within the atlas are automatically displayed at a resolution appropriate to the sensitivity of the species in accordance with the Scottish Natural Heritage sensitive species list. There is no need for data providers to pre-blur their sensitive species data.
Led by the NBN Secretariat (in accordance with an action identified in the NBN Strategic Action Plan) a consultation will take place with all Network Data Partners to ensure sensitive species lists used in the Atlas take into account temporal and regional geographic sensitivities.
What resolution can data be stored and displayed at?
Data held in the Atlas can either be displayed as point or grid resolution data. The available resolutions include:
? Point data
? 100m
? 1km
? 2km
? 5km
? 10km
How do I supply data to the NBN Atlas Scotland?
Data supply will be via the current NBN Gateway data upload system. The data exchange format will remain the same and all data should be sent to data@nbn.org.uk
In the future, Data Partners will be able to ‘push’ data directly to the Atlas at the time of their choosing (daily, monthly, yearly).
What data licenses are used for the NBN Atlas?
Each dataset will be assigned a creative commons licence, chosen by the contributing data partner. This licence will outline under what circumstances the data can be used. The type of data licence assigned can be found in the dataset metadata and within any data download. When responding to requests for enhanced access to sensitive species the Data Partner will also be able to select one of these licenses.
The available data licences are CC0, CC-BY, CC-BY-NC, and OGL.
? CC0: ‘No rights reserved’ licence. All data is in the public domain
? CC-BY: This license allows others to use data, even commercially, as long as the original data creator is credited.
? CC-BY-NC:This license allows others to use data only for non-commercial purposes. The original data creator must be credited.
? OGL: Open government licence.
Are records submitted directly to the NBN Atlas assigned a data license?
Records submitted directly to the NBN Atlas Scotland using the online recording form will be assigned a CC-BY license making these data fully available for onward reuse.
Are controls available to provide enhanced access to my records?
Data Partners will have the ability to accept or reject enhanced access requests by users for their sensitive species records or records at sensitive sites.
What does ‘commercial’ use mean under a CC-BY-NC license
You may not use the material for commercial purposes, where these are primarily intended for commercial advantage or monetary compensation.
What will happen to the NBN Gateway?
This depends on the level of uptake for the Atlas programme. If each country supports the Atlas implementation programme for the UK then it is likely that the NBN Gateway will not be needed in the future, However, if any of the four countries do not adopt the Atlas platform then it is likely that the NBN Gateway will be needed for the foreseeable future.
In the meantime we regard the NBN Gateway as the critical national data aggregation tool for the UK.
How can I help?
You can join the NBN Atlas Scotland User Testing Group by emailing us at info@als.scot
Alternatively, you can provide feedback and suggestions for improvements to the NBN Atlas Scotland by sending your feedback to info@als.scot
FAQs
We will be adding a Frequently Asked Question section to the NBN Atlas Scotland. This page will be regularly updated and if you have further questions please consult this page. If you question is not answered by this page, please send any questions to info@als.scot for inclusion.