Ocean Biodiversity Informatics - an emerging field of science

‘Ocean Biodiversity Informatics’ (OBI) heralds a new era in biological research and management that is revolutionising the way we approach marine biodiversity research. OBI uses computer technology to manage marine biodiversity information (capturing, storing, searching for, retrieving, visualising, mapping, modelling, analysing and publishing data). This allows more users better and faster access to biodiversity information than ever before. The global nature of phenomena such as climate change, over-fishing, and other changes in ecosystems, would not have been recognised had it not been for informatics-aided analyses.The prospect of data mining and exploration on a global scale is enough to gladden the hearts of marine scientists across the world, as marine biology embraces the computer age. Access to global data through OBI will allow for worldwide gap analysis resulting in new perspectives on current research, the promotion of collaborations between research groups and real data sets for teaching purposes, to mention just a few of the potential benefits. OBI is an initiative of the 21st century and will make conventional marine biodiversity research more dynamic and comprehensive, with a range of constantly evolving online tools

IMIS: Integrated Marine Information System

The Flanders Marine Institute has taken the initiative to build an integrated information tool, called IMIS. The objective of this database is to provide information on all topics relevant to marine sciences - be it people with their expertise, institutions and their mandate, publications, etc. Different types of 'knowledge items' correspond to different modules in the system, each with their own entry into the database. These modules are (currently): Persons, Institutes, Literature, Journals, Conferences, Projects and Datasets. IMIS version 1.0 (accessible at: http://www.vliz.be/vmdcdata/Imis/index.htm) is in operation and the VMDC (Flanders Marine Data and Information Centre) schedules a new enhanced version in 2002