Since 2010, the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA) provides information on all the known species in Australia and contributes to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). By lending access to this national open source platform, the open and modular architecture of ALA enables re-use of ALA tools by other countries and regions. Over the years, thanks to the ALA team and GBIF, the community has grown in different ways from production to training courses.

Firstly, data portals based on ALA but residing outside Australia, have been launched in several institutions such as INBIO in Costa Rica and Canadensys in Canada, and in the GBIF network via at least six nodes presently operating national ALA-based portals (e.g., Spain, Portugal, France, Sweden, Argentina, United Kingdom). Others will follow in the coming years (e.g., Colombia, Peru). Other countries, such as Andorra and Benin, have also begun to develop their own installations with the aid of partners in the Living Atlases Community. Secondly, we are now able to set up workshops geared to different levels of expertise. At TDWG 2017 we will propose both beginner’s and advanced workshops. Thirdly, the experience gained by installing and customizing their own data portals has allowed many advanced participants to share their expertise in subjects like internationalization, data management, and customization, with others during workshops. Adding to these points, as an open source software, developers contribute to the community by implementing new functionalities and improving the translation into several languages for users of the software. Today, some modules are fully translated into Spanish, French, and Portuguese.

In this poster, we will show the human aspect of the project by introducing the Living Atlases, an international community created around the ALA framework, highlighting how re-using existing software can be motivating and stimulating. We will also present the new official website that we will launch through the GBIF Capacity Enhancement Support Programme (CESP)*1 around the next advanced workshop and future projects planned in order to increase the durability of our community.

Atlas of Living Australia, GBIF, Community, Data portals

Marie-Elise Lecoq, David Martin