Corresponding author: Damiano Oldoni (
Academic editor:
Invasive alien species represent one of the major threats to biodiversity. Prevention is better than cure, but once invasive species get established, early management interventions are important to prevent further damage to nature and increasing management costs. Managers need to be informed as swiftly as possible when invasive species pop up in their area. Moreover, an effective response also requires information on species in neighbouring areas. This way, managers can anticipate recolonisation and coordinate the response across higher spatial scales. Open data are indispensible to efficiently organize such early detection of and rapid response to invasive species.
Here, we present
Data on invasive alien species in Belgium are scattered across a multitude of sources, including project surveys, official monitoring schemes, scientific projects and citizen science reporting portals. We facilitated the standardization and publication of these sources as open datasets to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (
The tool is currently being tested by the Belgian managerial community. In time, we hope to increase both the taxonomic scope as well as the number of sources. To our knowledge the RIPARIAS early alert tool is one of the first of its kind in Europe. It is unique in displaying data from multiple data sources at the highest spatial resolution, considering the species from the European Union Invasive Species Regulation (
Damiano Oldoni
TDWG 2022
LIFE RIPARIAS: Reaching Integrated and Prompt Action in Response to Invasive Alien Species (LIFE19 NAT/BE/000953)
Initial draft: TA; software development: NN; conceptualization: NN, TA, BD, DO, PD; funding acquisition: TA, PD; project administration: DO; data curation: LR, DO, PD; testing and feedback: TA, BD, DO, PD, data providers.