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About the e-ATLAS
Australia’s Tropical Land and Seas
The e-Atlas is a partnership between many research providers in order to develop a portal to information about Australia’s tropical terrestrial and marine environments. By providing the means to share and access data, maps and information on topics relevant to the region, the ATLAS aims to promote collaboration and support the work of management agencies, researchers, reef-based industries and community groups. Decades of research have generated a large amount of data and information on the Great Barrier Reef and the terrestrial tropical ecosystems. Until now this information has generally been under-used.
The objectives of the e-Atlas are to:
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provide a ‘one-stop shop’ for accurate, up-to-date and comprehensive information, maps, reports, scientific papers and data;
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to produce interactive maps of environmental conditions, biodiversity, risks and hotspots of environmental concern;
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provide high capacity storage, custom-developed open-source software for data processing and display as well as data access to the public and/or registered users;
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provide the platform for data integration and collaboration across institutions;
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display the results of statistical and process models, to synthesize and interpret data and to inform management about contemporary ecological and environmental issues with an emphasis on risk, resilience and response.
The e-Atlas is based entirely on an open source philosophy and uses a moderated wiki style approach in order to grow through contributions from a wide range of users. Partners gain access to the technology and tools to process and display their data spatially, and a forum to explain and interpret their data and findings. The pages are written by users who are experts in their fields and who will be responsible for their accuracy; all contributions will be screened before publication.
The e-Atlas has a sister product, the Ningaloo Atlas, http://ningaloo-atlas.org.au/ which is based on the same philosophy and technology.
The e-Atlas comprises four components:
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A Website to host the data repository and tools and to provide interpretative text summaries of key topics;
- A searchable Repository of data, metadata, maps and scientific reports;
- Tools to search, explore, interactively map and analyse spatial and temporal data;
- Research into risk, resilience and response of the Great Barrier Reef system.
To find out more about the collaborating organisations, please click on their logos below.
